WESTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Minutes of the Meeting
December 13, 2013
The meeting of the Board of Trustees of Western Illinois University convened at 8:01 A.M. in the Capitol
Rooms of the University Union, WIU – Macomb Campus. Chair Cathy E. Early presided.
Chair Early said hi folks. Welcome, glad to have you all here today. A number of us were up in the Quad
Cities last night. Nice to see everybody made it down to Macomb today.
Chair Early moved to convene the Board to Open Session. Trustee Hare seconded the motion.
The following trustees were present to answer roll call:
Trustee Andre B. Ashmore
Trustee Roger D. Clawson
Trustee Lyneir R. Cole
Trustee Cathy E. Early
Trustee Carolyn J. Ehlert Fuller
Trustee William L. Epperly
Trustee Phil G. Hare
Trustee Yvonne S. Savala
Chair Early moved to convene the Board to Executive Session to consider personnel, legal, collective bargaining and other such issues as covered by Section 2.c. of the Illinois Open Meetings Act with plans to reconvene in open session at approximately 9:00 A.M. Trustee Cole seconded the motion.
Roll Call
Trustee Ashmore
Trustee Clawson
Trustee Cole
Trustee Early
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Trustee Ehlert Fuller Yes
Trustee Epperly
Trustee Hare
Yes
Yes
Trustee Savala Yes
Motion carried. The Board convened to Executive Session at 8:03 A.M
.
Following Executive Session, Chair Early moved to reconvene into Open Session at 9:00 A.M. Trustee
Cole seconded the motion.
The following trustees were present to answer roll call:
Trustee Andre B. Ashmore
Trustee Roger D. Clawson
Trustee Lyneir R. Cole
Trustee Cathy E. Early
Trustee Carolyn J. Ehlert Fuller
Trustee William L. Epperly
Trustee Phil G. Hare
Trustee Yvonne S. Savala
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Also present for the open meeting of the Board of Trustees:
President Jack Thomas
Legal Counsel Representative Matt Kwacala
Board Treasurer and Vice President for Administrative Services Julie DeWees
Administrative Assistant to the Board Kerry McBride
Provost and Academic Vice President Ken Hawkinson
Vice President for Advancement and Public Services Brad Bainter
Vice President for Student Services Gary Biller
Vice President for Quad Cities and Planning Joseph Rives
Advisory Group Representatives present:
Student Government Association President – Caleb Markey
Civil Service Employees Council Representative – Bill Rupert
Council of Administrative Personnel Vice President – Amanda Shoemaker
Faculty Senate Vice Chair – Bill Polley
Chair Early said great. It’s wonderful to have you all here today. We have to do the minutes.
REVIEW AND APPROVAL OF OCTOBER 11, 2013 BOARD MEETING MINUTES
Trustee Ehlert Fuller moved to approve the October 11, 2013 Board Meeting minutes. Trustee Cole seconded the motion.
Roll Call
Trustee Ashmore
Trustee Clawson
Trustee Cole
Trustee Early
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Trustee Ehlert Fuller Yes
Trustee Epperly
Trustee Hare
Yes
Yes
Trustee Savala Yes
CHAIRPERSON’S REMARKS
Chair Early said ok, now I’ll welcome everybody on an exciting weekend. I love, in May we always talk about being graduation weekend and of course December is also graduation weekend. As a note, last night there was a reception held up in the Quad Cities. Joe probably has some more specific numbers, but there were a lot of people. It was a reception. There’s not an actual commencement ceremony that’s held in the Quad Cities, so this is a reception honoring the graduates and it was fantastic. It was very, very well attended. The three speakers, the three graduating speakers that briefly addressed the crowd were excellent. At one point, there was even a little, a couple different times that were pretty emotional the students were. I leave it to Joe if you want to make some remarks on that. It was really fantastic. I’m looking forward to the rest of this weekend.
Homecoming Weekend in October following our last Board weekend was a great success. I enjoyed seeing a lot of friends and alumni that return to campus to celebrate.
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In November, I had the privilege of participating in our Scholarship Banquet which is always a tremendous event to see are students that our working so hard and getting recognized. It’s really an awesome experience to hear a little bit more about our students and all the good things they do all the time, and it’s also really nice to meet all of the donors. Many of the scholarships that are presented, the donors come just for that event, just for that weekend, and so it’s really nice to get to meet the donors, and it’s also really excellent that a lot of the donors get to meet their scholarship recipients and actually visit with them at least over a lunch. They get a couple hours together and it’s a meaningful experience, and
I’ll say that on a personal note as well, because that’s actually usually where I meet my scholarship recipient is at that banquet, and it’s really fun to have a little bit of contact. And also remind them that later on in their careers perhaps they can give back to Western as well. So, I try to do my bit for Brad when I’m at the Scholarship Banquet.
I want to thank Dr. Thomas and the University administration for their continued work to make sure that
Western has a good voice in Springfield. I know that Dr. Thomas works tirelessly along with the other university presidents and chancellors to ensure that higher education funding remains at the top of our legislators list. I also want to make sure that I thank the University Professionals of Illinois Local 4100, for working with the administration to develop a new three-year agreement. The Board will be reviewing that agreement and taking action in our meeting later today. There’s one of the other fun things being chair, being on the board, being in Macomb, a while ago, a number of weeks ago, the Macomb Police
Department and Mayor Inman held a ceremony to present some Citizens Awards of Appreciation, and those three, there were three students and one parent that were all recognized at the ceremony. The folks that live in Macomb probably remember hearing the news story, and I’ll just recap it very briefly. Out at
Spring Lake, which is a park just outside of town, there were three students that were fishing. A gentleman drove by them in his car and asked how the fish were biting, and they said everything’s good, then he went on his way. Next thing they knew, the students heard a crash, and it was dusk when this was happening. They heard a crash. They heard a rapid acceleration. Next thing they knew, this car went flying into Spring Lake, and I mean it went flying in with enough force that the car was submerged, and it was dark enough, and Spring Lake if any of you have ever been there it’s not exactly crystal clear waters.
It’s like most lakes a little bit muddy. This car went flying in. The three students dropped their fishing gear and went, excuse me, and dove in the water. They brought out the gentleman, unfortunately the gentleman did not survive the incident. He had had a medical event that is what precipitated the accident.
Also, at the same time, after the crash, a gentleman came running out from a camp site. He had been primitive tent camping, and he came out and he said is there anybody else in the car. And the kids said we don’t know, we don’t think so. He picked up a rock and he went in, and he dove in and broke out the car windows to search the car to make sure there was nobody else in the car. So, at that ceremony LEJA majors Matthew Demetral and Owen Hill from Joliet and Philosophy major Ryan Brushaber from Elk
Grove Village and Mr. Scott Davis from Wisconsin, and I will note that he is the father of one of our women’s soccer team players, were all recognized and given an award by the Mayor. So, you know I said that earlier, it was great to be at the Scholarship Banquet and to see our kids who are doing so well academically and get that recognition. It was really cool to see kids that just obviously bam! They’re going to be there. They’re going to take care of business, and it was really nice for them to get that recognition from the City of Macomb and the Macomb Police Department.
I also want to say another good thing about the students. I said something to Caleb earlier about this.
Later this afternoon, we’re going to have a ribbon cutting for the new gateway entrance to the University, and that project was able to be enacted solely because of student support. Student fees are allowed to be used for the students have the opportunity to elect to use some of their student fee money for facility enhancement and improvement. Past projects that the students have taken on and funded include the turf, the new turf at the football field, the east side stands which we often refer to as the student stands. They took care of that in previous years, and this gateway to the University was funded, was voted upon by the students, and the students opted to do this. Western is just really fortunate to have strong student support,
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which is vital in providing outstanding facilities for us, and I just want to take this opportunity to thank
SGA and to pass this on to all our your students, all the students who voted for that. Thank you very much
Caleb. So, with that, I’m going to go ahead and let the rest of the meeting go on, but I appreciate all of you being here today, and look forward to hearing your reports. I’ll move to President Thomas.
PRESIDENT’S REMARKS
President Thomas said thank you and Good morning. We’re looking forward to an exciting weekend here.
I first want to start by congratulating our students who will be recognized this afternoon at the Honors
Convocation and those who will be graduating tomorrow. I want to thank Joe Rives and those in the Quad
Cities. We had a wonderful celebration last evening as we celebrated in a reception for those students who are graduating from the Quad Cities. And they had their parents and relatives and friends there so it was a grand affair, so Joe we do thank you for that. I would also like to congratulate our Alumni Achievement recipients: Stan Campbell, and our very own Trustee Roger Clawson will be recognized as one of our
Alumni Achievement recipients, so we are excited about that as well, John Comerford, who is the new
President of Blackburn College and also a graduate of Western Illinois University, Richard Goldsbury and Jeff Lorber. So, we are excited about the Alumni Achievement recipients who will be honored this weekend.
I would also like to publicly recognize former Macomb resident and one of Western's own, the Rev. Dr.
C.T. Vivian, who was among 16 individuals recognized on November 20 with the Presidential Medal of
Freedom. President Barack Obama presented Dr. Vivian with a medal during a ceremony at the White
House. The Rev. C.T. Vivian graduated from Macomb High School in 1942 and attended Western Illinois
University, where he worked as the sports editor for the student newspaper. His career as an activist began in Peoria, Illinois, where he participated in his first sit-in demonstration in 1947. He also received an Honorary Doctorate from WIU. We do have a street named after him. Part of Murray Street is named the C.T. Vivian Way. I am pleased to have had the pleasure of him speaking at my Inauguration in
September 2011. We are very proud of Rev. Dr. C.T. Vivian and we honor him today here at Western
Illinois University, so we’re very pleased for one of our own who has received this award.
Also, we were very pleased to have Senator Dick Durbin here last week. We hosted him for a luncheon, and we discussed lots of issues, and he’s very supportive of Western, gave us a lot of insight and a lot of things, areas where he wants to support this institution so we’re very pleased and thank those individuals,
Jeanette Malafa, and others for putting this together as he arrived on our campus.
As I noted in a letter to the campus community last week, I am pleased that we have received two reimbursements from the State for FY2014. However, as of December 1, 2013, the State owes the
University approximately $33.3M. We have received some MAP funding as well. We are disappointed with the Pension Reform Bill that was recently passed. I continue to meet with other public university presidents and chancellors to discuss pension reform and other legislative topics that affect higher education. We will hold a special presentation for our campus community on January 23 to discuss the budget, the challenges we face, and decisions that must be made with regard to the FY2015 budget. I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge Dr. John Miller, Dr. Richard Filipink, and other members of the UPI who are here today. We certainly do appreciate you working with my negotiating team, and helping us during these very challenging times that we face with the budget and your willingness to renegotiate and extend the contract. I would like for you to just stand for your 15 seconds of fame. Please stand. Let’s give them a round of applause. I also want to recognize Provost Hawkinson, Kathy Neumann and Matt Bierman for working on the administrative side in bringing this agreement about. Please stand for your 15 seconds of fame. Thank you. We’re certainly very grateful to you all and we look forward to a continued, wonderful working relationship in moving this institution to where it should be. Thank you all
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so much.
The presidents and chancellors of the public universities met this week to discuss issues surrounding higher education in the State of Illinois. We continue to collaborate where appropriate on state issues.
During this meeting the presidents and chancellors discussed the overall legislative agenda for higher education with the legislative liaisons, who joined us this year. This is the first time we’ve had the legislative liaisons from each institution there to provide insight to the presidents and chancellors. So, that was a very good meeting. Specifically, we discussed topics of pension reform, FY15 funding levels, performance funding, student debt, minimum wage and other issues.
While we continue to face many challenges due to the financial crisis in the State of Illinois, Western
Illinois University is pleased to say we continue to move forward as an institution. And we continue to be ranked high in U.S. News & World Report as well as the Princeton Review , GI Jobs Magazine and
Military Advanced Education . As I always say we continue to move, we have to move forward as a university. We cannot afford to stand still, and this is evidence that we are continuing to do well because we continue to rank high in the rankings. For the first time in the history as I can recall, in October, the
Chronicle of Higher Education recognized Western for having a large number of Fulbright Scholars for this academic year. They are all studying in different places, and we also had some Fulbright Student
Scholars as well. So, we’re pleased with what’s taking place here in terms of Fulbright.
As the chairperson of the Board has already mentioned, the new, she called it the gateway entrance. I’ll say that the gateway entrance to the campus was funded through the student enhancement fees, and this is complete on the Northeast section of our campus at University Drive. We extend our appreciation to our students for supporting this project, and we will have a ribbon cutting at 1:30 p.m. today to celebrate the completion of the sign. I would like to have SGA President Caleb Markey, Student Trustee Andre
Ashmore, and any other students who are here to please stand for your 15 seconds of fame. Thank you.
We certainly do appreciate the leadership coming from our students here at this institution, and we have some outstanding student leaders on our campus. We’re very proud of you. We’re pleased with the job that you do to help make things better here at Western Illinois University.
When we look at the Quad Cities, we see that Phase II is moving along quite well. We look forward to the ribbon cutting in August. We are on schedule; I am told we are on schedule so we look forward to that.
We continue to move forward with the renovation of the Student Union. I’m sure Dr. Biller will talk some about that, and this is Phase I of the Student Union. And we hope to get the funding for the Center for the
Performing Arts, and hopefully we’ll get that before Christmas. We’ll see. We’ll pray about it.
It is an exciting time on our campus. I am proud of the work that we have completed despite the budget challenges, and we will continue to move forward as a University. I am appreciative of your continued support of Western Illinois University. From my family to your family, I wish you a very happy holiday and a wonderful new year. This concludes my report. I will be happy to entertain any questions or concerns that you may have.
LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
Jeanette Malafa said hello. As you all know the Legislature returned to Springfield for a one-day special session on Tuesday, December 3 rd
to vote on Senate Bill 1, the compromised Pension Reform Bill negotiated by the legislative leaders. On Thursday, Governor Quinn signed the bill into law. The main elements of the plan include for benefit changes: reduction of the COLA for retirees, so the automatic 3%
COLA is now replaced by a system based on years of service and tied to inflation; COLA deferments for
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future Tier I retirees; current Tier I retirees would miss annual adjustments on retirement, how many
COLAs are missed depends on the age of the employee and ranges from one to five; delaying the retirement age for current state workers aged 45 and under for each year an employee is younger than 46, the retirement age increases by four months. For employee consideration, reduction of employment contributions by 1% for Tier I employees and other provisions include capping pensionable earnings for
Tier I participants at 109,971; the option of 5% of Tier I participants to join a new defined contribution plan; they changed the effective rate of interest; they eliminate the use of sick and vacation days for service credit or pensionable earnings for future participants. And then the State added some, the leaders added some funding guarantees if the State doesn’t make the required payment to the pension funds the pension systems can go to court to force the State to make the payment. There is a pension stabilization fast track beginning in 2015 where the State is going to contribute 10% of pension savings back to the pension systems and then an extra $364M into the pension accounts beginning in 2019, and then an extra
$1B annually until the pension funds are fully funded. The new law puts these pension systems on course to be 100% funded by 2044, and then certain non-governmental organizations such as the unions, lobby groups, and not-for-profits cannot participate in the state retirement plans anymore. The legislation passed the House 62 to 53, and the Senate 30 to 24. And unless this legislation is challenged in the court and a stay is granted, it will go into effect June 1, 2014.
Now the University prepares for spring session. We will continue to push for higher appropriations, release of our capital funds, and release from state mandates. In addition we also have our annual legislative reception under way, in the planning stage. And that’s it, does anybody have any questions on that? Nope, alright.
GENERAL COMMENTS BY VICE PRESIDENTS
Academic Services
Provost Ken Hawkinson said good morning. I want to join President Thomas in thanking Dr. John Miller, his leadership team, and the faculty and staff for working with us on the budget difficulties, and agreeing to spread out the pay increase over several years and extend the contract. This is the second time in recent years that the UPI leadership and the bargaining unit have agreed to renegotiate pay increases and extend the contract. For decades, while labor strife has been rampant on other universities in the state, the WIU administration and WIU UPI chapter have engaged in principled and positive negotiations wherein the welfare of the University, all its employees, students, and all over stakeholders have been given consideration in our talks. We should all be proud today for what was accomplished, and I personally thank you John. I appreciate it.
Now, carrying through on two of the goals established for Academic Affairs for this year. Assistant Vice
President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Ron Williams has visited all departments and schools working with chairs and faculty to develop recruitment and retention plans for all units. As I’ve stated in the past, we believe all must play a role in recruiting new students, both native and international, both undergraduate and graduate. And we all must develop initiatives to help retain the students that we do recruit. We will partner with our Admissions team and do all we can to assist in bringing in more highly qualified students to Western, and ensure their success. Dr. Nancy Parsons, Associate Provost and Director of Graduate
Studies has also been meeting with departments and graduate faculty so as to increase our graduate enrollment. Her most recent initiative is to personally visit provosts and deans at regional liberal arts colleges, such as Monmouth College, Knox, Augustana, Illinois College, McKendree, and many, many more to recruit and develop partnerships with our various graduate programs. Thus far, she made initial contact with 10 colleges in Illinois, 8 in Iowa, 6 in Missouri, and 4 in Wisconsin, and 10 have committed so far, and we expect all the schools to commit to meeting with Nancy over the coming months.
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As you all recall to help improve retention of our new freshmen and as part of our First Year Experience program, we created a new version of our University 100 class wherein students learn about human wellbeing, study habits, test taking, managing time, safety, diversity, and many other topics to help students adjust to college. We had more than 1,700 new freshmen enroll in just over 100 sections taught by volunteer faculty and staff. As the first semester of University 100 comes to a close, we are anxious to review the comments we’ve asked students, peer mentors and instructors to provide. We will make adjustments as needed to ensure this new initiative meets its goal of helping to improve our retention rates and to contribute to our students overall success. I’ll report on the findings of our assessment instruments at the next Board meeting.
And let me update you a little bit on some of our international recruiting initiatives. This past fall, Dr.
Richard Carter, our Director of International Programs, took a recruiting trip to Myanmar, and as a result of that trip we already have one student coming and we also have a delegation from Myanmar visiting the campus and President Thomas this coming February. You recall President Thomas hosted the
Ambassador from Botswana last year. That is starting to bear fruit as well. Our first student from
Botswana will be coming in the spring, and we expect many more to follow. You recall President Thomas and Dr. Carter visited many embassies last year. One of the embassies they stopped by to visit was Brazil.
The result of that was 15 Brazilian students came this semester, and we’re expecting a significant increase in that number will come this spring. We have a short-term group coming for language training in our
WESL program, 28 students for a 5-week special language training session in the spring. Dr. Carter has initiated another program called the Faculty Ambassadors where when our international faculty return home, they become our recruiters and they go to various universities, and other entities to recruit for us, and they do this on a volunteer basis. New international admissions for the spring thus far we have 138 new students admitted, usually we have about a 50% yield rate. And the largest countries that we have students coming from are 71 from India, 22 from Saudi Arabia, 16 from Nigeria to join the 17 already here, so we’re making much bigger inroads into a number of these countries. During the spring, Dr.
Thomas and Dr. Carter will be returning to Washington D.C. to visit more embassies. Dr. Carter will also represent WIU by participating in the State of Illinois Educational Trade Mission to China this March.
We have begun our budget and planning process for the next fiscal year. Chairs are now in the process of meeting with their faculty and deans and directors are meeting with their departments and units to prepare for the next consolidated annual report planning document and budget request. Despite these difficult times, as Dr. Thomas likes to say, we must continue to plan and move forward. I have several topics on the agenda today, and so we’ll save any additional remarks concerning those topics later in the meeting.
This concludes my remarks, and I’m available for any questions that you might have.
President Thomas said I’d also like to add that yesterday we had the WESL graduation. I failed to mention that we had the largest graduating class that we’ve had in years. We had 45 students graduating through the WESL program yesterday.
Trustee Epperly said a couple questions. One, you didn’t comment on it, but the last meeting we had the
Strategic Plan for Technology, and to me the younger generation is totally wired. They probably move at warp speed when it comes to that stuff. I’m of the belief that mobile technology is probably going to define a university, define a business in the future, and one thing that Joe does with the Strategic Plan is sends us a monthly update. With that Strategic Plan, to me it’s so important as to our future, would it be possible maybe to get a, I call it, a quarterly update? But we could get it before each meeting as to what’s happening with the tech plan, you know just almost a quarterly update. Provost Hawkinson said yes, and I will ask Director Frazier, Steve, you’ll make sure we have that done before each Board meeting. Stephen
Frazier said yes. Trustee Epperly said thank you Steve.
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And I had some other questions, but we’ll talk about that under retention in regards to advising and so forth. Provost Hawkinson said ok. Trustee Epperly said thank you.
Advancement and Public Services
Vice President Brad Bainter said happy holidays from the Division of Advancement and Public Services and the Foundation. We have had a busy quarter ourselves. University Relations continues to promote numerous events and activities on campus including Homecoming, Stuff the Bus, student and faculty accomplishments, Admissions initiatives, and commencement. We work with Admissions on the 2013-
2014 student recruitment publications, coordinating numerous media interviews with WIU faculty, administration, including a health science faculty member who was a disaster recovery expert following the November-Washington, Illinois, tornado.
In marketing, we are continuing to promote the new Think Purple success story campaign now. You’ve seen new billboards possibly around the state featuring some of our students and alumni. We also have new 30-second commercials that are airing on WGEM and during highly rated watched TV shows on other networks, such as Joe Decker featured during Survivor finale. Additional 30-seconds following success story themes in production featuring WIU Quad Cities student for use in the Quad Cities market,
30-second commercials in select theaters in Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, and Wisconsin are airing now through January 14 th
, and now that the Macomb theater is digital we have one airing each month in
Macomb’s theaters for 12 months. The commercials feature two of our successful students and two of our very successful alumni. In addition, we had a digital marketing contract out for bid. Those are in and being looked at as we speak, and that will enhance our digital only marketing efforts for our presence online. We’ve also worked with Professor John Drea’s MBA class to create a survey and compile data for the Think Purple campaign. We’ll be meeting in January to discuss those results.
University Television continues to record numerous campus programs, presentations, lectures, and events to diversify programming on Channel 3 and showcase WIU to the region. We continue to develop original programming such as Illinois Artist Series with JoAnn Morgan, develop documentaries for the
WPA project, Rocky on Parade, Patrick Magoon, the Chicago Children’s Hospital, and finally I would like to thank University Television and Dr. James Stegall for developing new WIU University and the
Madrigal Singers for developing the new holiday video featuring season’s greetings from President
Thomas. We’ve had many positive comments once again about that video.
Student Services
Vice President Gary Biller said thank you Chairman Early, members of the Board. It’s my pleasure to update you on some of the activities within Student Services. Let me start with talking about our Career
Development Center. This is an important working group on our campus that is involved in trying to get our graduating students placed in employment. They held two major career fairs this year, but they also have continued to work. They have created a Faculty Advisory Committee to help them brainstorm ideas of ways that they can collaborate between academic departments and the Career Development Center.
They have started a program where they’re asking employers to act as mentors or job shadows for students, so that the students who are interested in that area can meet that employer, follow them for a few days. Right now we’ve got 20 signed up so far, and we continue to do that. So it’s important that we continue to do that, because these are tough economic times and we’re doing everything we can to try and get our students jobs out there.
Around thanksgiving, Sodexo sponsored Stuff the Bus as Brad mentioned, and we did stuff a bus full of food for the needy members of our community, and we appreciate their efforts for that.
University Housing & Dining Services won their President’s Award for their services at their Great Lakes
Housing Conference, and they continue to move forward building another living and learning community.
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We’ve got one for Health Science students. We’ve got one for students in Broadcasting and other areas.
We’re working with the Provost’s office now to see if we can create one for freshman deciding students who haven’t yet declared a major to provide some special assistance for them.
In the student Union as you’ve heard, the renovations continue. They’re drilling even as we sit here and speak, but I did want to update you on a couple of things. The hotel area in the Union we are updating.
The President’s Suite and Trustees’ Suite have been cleared. They are empty now and next week we will start the rebuilding process with new furniture, new carpet, new you know everything, new paint, everything we can do to that. We hope for a completion date in mid-spring for those areas.
Women’s Center held their annual Take Back the Night program, and it was a fantastic program for a lot of the participants there.
Financial Aid, I mentioned this in our last meeting, but I want to re-emphasize it again. They conducted a campaign last year to get students to complete their Financial Aid application early, because there’s a deadline for receiving MAP funds from Illinois, and we were very successful in that. We got close to $1M more MAP funding. We are re-doubling our efforts in that this year, because the deadline has been moved up. There’s now just 31 days, January 1 st
to February 1 st
to get that application in and qualify for MAP funding, so we’re conducting a very strong campaign to try and get more students to complete that application.
As Brad mentioned we held our annual Scholarship Banquet, and thank you for being there and everyone else who was there.
In Admissions, we have had a Discover Western program. We had 452 participants in that on October
26 th . And then also through Admissions, I want to make you aware of some minor changes that we’re making with Orientation and with Housing and welcome week. We’re restructuring our Summer
Orientation program a little bit because we now have the University 100 program which addresses many of those needs that we try and talk to students about. We’re moving up the move-in date for freshmen so it will now be on Friday, August 22 nd
rather than the Saturday, but what we are adding in there on that following Saturday and we hope this is going to help our retention effort for students is a job fair. We’re going to be asking local employers as well as on-campus employers to be available to meet with students on that Saturday afternoon, and interview for jobs and see if we can get them jobs, because we know our freshmen students are looking for some part-time work. So, we hope to get that accomplished as they move in. Our Admissions Office, the fall was focusing on recruitment. We’ll continue some recruitment, but this spring is focusing on yield programs. What can we do to actually kind of close the deal for these students? We’ve got several efforts going on. One is with Amtrak we have purchased 1,000 roundtrip tickets from Amtrak and we will invite students and a guest from anywhere along the Amtrak line to
Chicago to come to campus to visit for a day. Why do we do this? Because we know that if you just receive our literature and you’re interested in us, you have maybe about a 16% chance of coming to
Western, but if we can get you on campus, show you our campus, get you to visit with our faculty, our staff, and others who are here, we increase that to about a 50% chance. So, I would invite any of you who have prospective students out there in Chicagoland or other areas that would like to do that. The
Admissions office is now serving as a travel agency. Call them, they’ll be happy to set up a time for you to come over and visit.
In addition to that, we’re doing some other spring yield events. Off campus we’ll be in Chicago two weekends in February. We’ll be in St. Louis one weekend in March, and then we’re working with the academic departments, we’ve put together some special visit days so that they can bring in prospective students from their areas. We’ve got Music signed up. Let’s see, we’ve got Psychology, Biology,
Business, Elementary Education, Public Health, Nursing, all those are hosting special days where we will
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invite those students here and show them those academic programs and show them around campus, again in an effort to increase the yield that we have. We’re also going to be continuing our Centennial Honors
Registration Program in the later part of the spring.
Dr. Thomas mentioned that Senator Durbin did visit here, and he also visited our GoWest Transit System.
He was unable to be there for the grand opening, and so Jude Kiah took him through the Transit System, and we appreciate all the support that he helped in putting that together.
Finally, Campus Rec, we’ve had two of our graduate assistants named as NCAA Emerging Leaders and there’s only 200 of those named nationwide, so we’re very proud of those students. They continue to represent us well.
Finally our Disability Services, it’s staffed by one professional, one clerical person and it helps hundreds and hundreds of students, and I just want to let you know that during finals week the service people over there along with volunteer students and staff assisted over 250 students in taking final exams where oftentimes they had to proctor them or read the exam to them or give them special time or whatever that was, and so I want to thank them but also all the volunteers, both students and staff who stepped forward to help them with all those exams.
I have one final note that I want to talk to you about and that’s I know many of you received an email from former Board member Mr. Steve Nelson concerning Financial Aid applications and some comparative numbers on that, and let me kind of give you the genesis of how that all comes about. All institutions in the United States that receive Financial Aid have to submit all sorts of reports to the
Department of Education, and we all do that. They’re about two years behind by the time we get all the reports in. Returning students, students who are currently here, typically list only one institution, Western
Illinois. They get the report then on retention rates, graduation rates, those kinds of things for our institution. A new student may list three or four schools, and they will get retention numbers and graduation numbers and all that on all of those schools. And that’s an effort to help them be comparative in looking at schools. I just wanted to let you know that as we look at the Illinois schools, and they look at
Pell Grant recipients. The high number of Pell Grant recipients is at Chicago State with 70%. The low is
Eastern, or I’m sorry, Illinois State at 28%. We have 38% of our students two years ago received Pell
Grants. Their retention, our students were at 71% retention freshmen to sophomore year, the high of course you’d expect Urbana-Champaign at 93%, the low Chicago State at 53%. They calculated graduation rate. Graduation rate is based on six years since the Federal Government will fund you up to
150% of the time for a normal degree. Our graduation rate after six years for our Pell recipients is 53%, the high is again Urbana-Champaign at 82%, the low is Chicago State at 21%. So, we’re right about in the middle of especially all of our peer schools: Northern, Southern, Eastern, all those. We compare very favorably with those schools when those students get those reports, so I wanted you to understand where those reports came from. If you’re ever interested in more data than you could ever consume, and Jeanette will tell you that I’m a data kind of guy, I look at this stuff all the time, there is a website that contains all of the Department of Education data that we submit and every other school submits. It’s called collegeinsight.org, so college-insight.org. You can go in there and request and look at all four year schools or two year schools or all schools in Illinois or in the United States or however you want to do that, so a lot of information available out there. We also provide our fact book which we’d be happy to share any parts of that with you at any time, so that concludes my report. I’d be happy to answer any questions that you might have at this time.
Trustee Ehlert Fuller said there are a lot of things going on in Student Affairs. I appreciate your report.
Will you briefly describe for us what the living and learning center does, is? VP Biller said yeah, we set aside a special wing or floor in a particular residence hall and then we put together students with a similar interest in that area: Broadcasting students, Nursing students, and those, and then they kind of have a
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faculty advisor assigned to that area who helps them out, and they do some special projects there. You know they’re making, recording video recordings and things like that in the studio we’ve set up for them in the Broadcasting learning community. One of the things that we understand about our incoming students, 35% of them come in and have not yet declared a major, and we would like to try again working with the Provost’s Office to group some of those together, provide some special programming for them on what it takes to decide a major, how you can explore that, look through the dictionary of occupational titles, take the strong interest inventory, help them move toward declaring a major, because not having a major is a risk factor for not staying in school. It’s hard to measure your progress if you don’t know where you’re going. So, that’s one of the living and learning communities that we’re working on.
Trustee Epperly said two, alright maybe three I guess, questions. My grandson lives in New Jersey. Will you give him a train ride back here? VP Biller said if he can make it to Chicago, we’ll take him from
Chicago to here. Trustee Epperly said ok, so you have to layover in Chicago. And you mentioned, it was actually my grandson, looking at schools in Jersey, but the one thing that came up and I’m not sure if I passed this on to Andy or not, but he visited a number of schools, and I asked him to summarize and send me the goods and the bads from all these schools, but one thing that came up, and he mentioned it, that several schools that he visited, and actually his mother mentioned it, that several schools that he visited I their tours pushed their Career Development Center and basically said hey, in fact they took them through their Career Development Center. I don’t know. Do we do that? VP Biller said yes. Trustee Epperly said ok, good, because that was, it impressed the parents, because to me the purpose of school is to get a better job. VP Biller said absolutely. Trustee Epperly said so they really pushed that. Ok, great.
Trustee Epperly said do we have a parents, council, student and parents’ council? VP Biller said yes, we do. It’s the Parents and Family Association. Trustee Epperly said ok, good. Is that successful? Does that work? Is it good? VP Biller said it’s very successful. We invite parents at every orientation when they come to become a part of that. They get a special newsletter, and then we have parents day, family day.
We had dads’ day this semester, had over 100 dads out there on the golf course you know and coming for dinner and special entertainment and visiting with their kids. We’ll have the moms’ visit day in the spring, so yeah we do maintain contact with them.
Trustee Cole said Gary, personally I want to say to you and your department, thank you for sending out the email to push these students to apply for their financial aid for next year. It’s out already and it’s encouraging people to start filing on this January 1 st
date, so I want to commend you on that. I also want to commend Andy and yourself on the efforts that you have made over the years with me in assisting students to come to Western. Whether it be the tours that you have provided, the access to utilize you specifically in being open for the recruitment of students, because I think that is important to have access and not just what you see at a fair which is what has made me successful along with you all in getting recruitment here. And I wanted to let you know that I’m still going to continue my efforts to work with you as much as possible to continue to bring students from the Chicagoland area here, and I think we’re doing a wonderful job at it right now. I just say let’s keep up the good work. VP Biller said thank you
Trustee Cole. I appreciate that, and you know you can send me a text message any time day or night and we’ll take care of them.
Administrative Services
Vice President Julie DeWees said thank you. The State currently owes the University $25.6M for FY14.
We just received $2.7M late yesterday afternoon, so it’s very good news. In review, we’ve received $3M in October, $4.4M in November, and the $2.7M in December. So hopefully according to the
Comptroller’s Office, we should receive another $3M between now and the end of the month, so they are staying on top of their schedule that they had promised us.
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We’ve not heard anything from our bond rating call that we had with S & P at the end of October. I don’t, it was a very positive call, but I’m just wondering if they’re not stalling waiting on the pension reform and seeing what they’re going to do with the State of Illinois.
Director of Public Safety Scott Harris is here today to answer any questions about the concealed carry policy that we’ve been working on for the past year. It will be in your Board packet and he would be happy to answer any questions.
Director of Facilities Management Scott Coker will be providing a Facilities Assessment Report later in the morning.
And finally, I would like to remind everyone about the ribbon cutting ceremony at 1:30 p.m. for the
Grand Entryway. I’m watching the weather right now. It looks like the snow is going to be holding off until 4:00 p.m., so I think we will have good weather. We’ve had so many people that were involved in this project, and I would like to congratulate and thank Dr. Thomas. He had a vision for us. He came to the committee and said I want a place on campus. It’s an entryway. It’s a doorway to campus to let people know that you have entered and it’s a great place. It’s the Grand Entryway, and this is not only for students and visitors but it’s also a reminder for employees and the City of Macomb people to know that this is a great place, and you are here. So, I think we were successful in that vision. I hope we were, and we’re very excited. So, please come today at 1:30 p.m. Wear your boots. We’ll have umbrellas if we need them, but we will have a very short ceremony. Scott’s going to talk a little bit about the history and how some of the, how we came about choosing some of the iconic things on the entryway. Dr. Thomas will speak, and Caleb, thank you for coming this afternoon, and then also Mayor Inman will be there, but we’ll keep it short.
President Thomas said I just want to commend Julie and Scott and your whole crew for what you have done. It couldn’t have gotten to where it is without the support and what you have done here in this effort, so we appreciate what you all have done.
Chair Early said and I will just say that we came in last night from the Quad Cities reception so I got to see the sign lit up for the first time. It is awesome. It is really, really nice. VP DeWees said we’re very happy with it. Chair Early continued and again, thanks to the students. VP DeWees said yes, yes.
Quad Cities and Planning
Vice President Joe Rives said good morning. Our local impact of the Quad Cities was felt last night. The reception that you spoke of had a headcount of 268 people, and as a first annual experience there was the joy of the moment. Special thanks to Provost Hawkinson and Dr. Thomas. This was not a Joe Rives idea.
The Quad Cities students petitioned to have a reception locally and our leadership stepped forward and said it was a great idea, so thank you to my colleagues for making it happen.
Regionally, our effect is felt as well. The Quad Cities Graduate Center, I gave you an update last year that our goal for both 12 months starting last year until this point was to change the emphasis of the center from graduate studies only to graduation in the Quad Cities, so we successfully recruited all of the local institutions to the grad center as well as maintaining at a distance institutions so that Drake, Illinois State,
Iowa State continue to participate. As a result of our collaboration and partnership, we’ve received a
$200,000 Lumina Grant that I’ve talked about in the past that if a student graduates from a Quad Cities institution and stays in place for six months they’ll get loan forgiveness. So, we’re very excited about that. The grant also includes operating funds for the Quad Cities center so we’re not reliant only on State of Iowa and State of Illinois funding. The center’s never had external funding like that before, so I’m very proud about that.
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At the national level and international level, our effect continues to be felt. Kristi Mindrup negotiated with the National Clearinghouse on Commuter Programs to become the host site, Western Illinois University-
Quad Cities, for its web, its research, its activity. In commuter campuses, non-residential campuses, that is the marquee organization, so we’ve received transfer of it from Northeastern State University in
Oklahoma, and we’re very excited about that.
Finally, our national and international effect in the fact that the National Branch Campus Administrators
Annual Conference this year is in Long Beach, and the reason I tell you is in 2015 the national conference, international conference because it has people from Australia and Canada already signed up is in Moline, Illinois. So, God help you all, there will be 200 Joe Riveses running around for a week in
Moline. So, stay clear or come join and drink the kool-aid as the case may be. With that, on behalf of all of us in the Quad Cities we wish you a joyous and happy holiday season, and I would yield to any questions or feedback that you might have.
Trustee Clawson said if I could add, Joe and Brad have a what they call a Quad Cities Planning and
Advisory Board, and I’ve attended a number of their meetings. It’s every two quarters, two months, and those are very dynamic. It’s exciting. It’s a room about a third the size of this, and you got all the leaders in the Quad Cities from other colleges, industry, and that, and there’s presentations made and it’s good.
It’s like the Chamber of Commerce and half, well three-fourths of them are Western people. And we have so many alums up there in the industry, and doing things that are coming back and doing things that we don’t all see down here, but a compliment to Joe and his fine work organizing that and Brad for what they do. So good job. VP Rives said and you all are welcome to come anytime.
Chair Early said I did think it was really nice that last night the first student that spoke, the undergrad. student is the one who actually initiated and circulated the petition for the reception. VP Rives said that’s really cool, and she told me to tell you that she will be back next year to ensure it’s bigger and better.
Chair Early said that’s good. She’s getting the j-o-b now right? VP Rives said yes, she is. Chair Early said ok, it’ll be a great chance for her to give back, Joe.
ADVISORY GROUP REPORTS
Consent Agenda: Civil Service Employees Council, Council of Administrative Personnel, Faculty
Senate, and Student Government Association:
Student Government Association President - Caleb Markey
The submitted Consent Agenda is as follows:
The WIU administration is commended for striving for institutional excellence and success despite ongoing budgetary struggles. It is heartening to see the various initiatives to move the University along.
President Thomas is to be commended for indicating that we can no longer continue business as usual.
We commend the SGA for passing a resolution and obtaining signatures calling on Governor Quinn to release the funds for constructing the Performing Arts Center. This is a time to invest in higher education and the arts. Every student that attends WIU and those in the local community will be greatly benefited by the construction and operation of this facility. We will continue to join together calling for the release of this funding.
We are pleased that the WIU chapter of the University Professionals of Illinois has reached an agreement with the administration to extend the current labor contract for two additional years and to spread out the previously scheduled raise for FY15 over a longer period.
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We are very distressed that the legislature has passed the amended Senate Bill 1 which will substantially lower the pensions of state employees. This will make it difficult for WIU to recruit and retain qualified professionals. The hard work of the We Are One Coalition over time, and the recent letter from the public university presidents expressing opposition to the bill are appreciated. Kudos to Representative
Hammond and Senator Sullivan for voting no and the opposite to Representative Verschoore and Senator
Jacobs for voting yes. We look forward to the courts declaring the bill unconstitutional.
Commencement is a time of recognition and celebration. We applaud the students who are graduating this semester. They have proven themselves to be scholars worthy of a degree from our institution. We let this time remind us that despite the challenges all institutions face, Western Illinois University is dedicated to the task of educating the next generation and preparing them to face the challenges of tomorrow.
Student Government Association President – Caleb Markey
SGA President Caleb Markey said I’ll start by saying the students are pleased to support the new grand entrance, and thank you all for the kind comments you have in that regards. I’ve submitted the SGA report as well as the consent agenda, and I’d be happy to answer any questions regarding those two.
Trustee Epperly said you mention in your report there that you are in an effort to further seek student opinions, and you went into some detail, but I commend you for that. To me if you’re going to have a student-centric university, you’ve got to be gathering the comments of the students, and I commend you guys for going out and getting that done and your process and so forth. Caleb said thank you. Our open forum was definitely successful, and we plan to have another one next semester.
The submitted SGA Report is as follows:
The Student Government Association is thrilled to announce the close of a very productive semester. We passed numerous pieces of legislation ranging from campus safety, campus infrastructure, state appropriations and academics. A brief summary is below of a few of our major activities.
SGA passed legislation giving funding to the new Dance Marathon initiative. Scheduled for the spring, this 12-hour event will raise funds to benefit the Children’s Miracle Network. We also approved a donation to the “Take Back the Night” event which is dedicated to stopping interpersonal violence.
A major piece of legislation passed this semester asked Governor Quinn to release the funds for the new
Performing Arts Center. We are incredibly proud of this bill as it was the first bill in recent SGA history to be sponsored by every member of our General Assembly. In addition, SGA leaders helped to circulate petitions among students—gathering signatures to accompany the legislation to Springfield. We, as students, believe that this facility will further our education, and expand our thinking. It will help develop us to be well-rounded scholars capable of meeting the challenges of an increasingly competitive world.
The facility will not only benefit us, however, but also every member of the Macomb community.
Members of our organization donated their time in October to participate in the annual “Stuff the Bus” event by volunteering their time to “Trick the Town.” Our students dropped off plastic bags at Macomb residences which were then filled with nonperishable food items to be donated to local food pantries.
In an effort to further seek student opinions, SGA kept with its tradition of hosting an annual open forum.
This semester the forum took place in the Bayliss and Henninger Underground and had a large and vocal turnout. We also asked Inter-Hall Council and Inter-Fraternity Council to partner with us to reinstate
“What’s Up Wednesday”—an initiative where we reach out to students and ask them for input about campus life. Between these two events, we received numerous ideas for future legislation.
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We are very hopeful for an equally productive spring semester, and would like to encourage students to have a safe and relaxing Winter Break. Merry Christmas!
Civil Service Employees Council Representative – Bill Rupert
Representative Bill Rupert said I’m sitting in for Wendi Mattson. Chair Early joked I was going to say it didn’t, Bill you don’t look like Wendi at all really, at all. Bill Rupert continued the report has been submitted. There have been no changes. I’ll be glad to answer any questions. Thank you.
Chair Early said any questions for Bill? VP Bainter said I would like to commend the Civil Service
Employees Council for the scholarship fundraiser they’ve done. It’s ongoing right now, putting flat Col.
Rocky in an office for a contribution has raised some money for the Civil Service Scholarships. It’s been a fun little project on campus, so I thank them for that support. Chair Early asked how does the flat Rocky work? VP Bainter said any department that wants to make a contribution to the scholarship fund, Civil
Service Scholarship Fund, gets to have a Rocky for a month in their office, flat Rocky. So, it’s moved around campus quite a bit during the course of the year so far. VP DeWees added I think it’s $25 a week isn’t it? So you pay $25 and then he sits in your office for a week. I know Public Safety they had three shifts donate money so he could be there. Was it there a month or? So, it’s fun. Chair Early said that’s great. Thanks very much. I appreciate everybody’s support with that. That’s very nice.
The submitted CSEC report is as follows:
The Civil Service Employees of the Month for October 2013 was Michelle Crosier, a Staff Nurse II at
Beu Health Center, November 2013 was Bob Bahr, a Physical Science Tech Assistant in the Chemistry
Department, December 2013 was Robert Fields, a Parking Service Agent II from Parking Services. On
December 6 during the Winter Luncheon the Employee of the Year was announced. The winner was
Robert Fields from Parking Services. We would like to thank all the employees of the month for their service to the University and to their nominators for helping to recognize them for their outstanding service.
On December 6, 2013, the CSEC held their Winter Luncheon. The theme was “The Roaring 20’s”, and it was located in the Sherman Hall Auditorium. There were approximately 185 employees in attendance.
The audience was treated to a live performance by BFA Senior Lorenzo Rush, a photo booth with clothing props from the 20’s, artist and Theatre faculty member, Spencer Musser drawing caricatures, raffle prizes, awards for the best dressed in costumes, and a delicious lunch served by Sodexo. We would like to thank everyone who participated in this event and purchased raffle tickets to help fund our scholarship awards.
Council of Administrative Personnel Vice President – Amanda Shoemaker
COAP Vice President Amanda Shoemaker said Dana Moon had to be out of town today due to a family emergency, so I just wanted to highlight a few things from her document. As you can see Shari Rich was on campus as part of our professional development subcommittee, and we have two more programs in the works for the spring. Our executive board is looking at the promotional structure documents. We are proud of all the 2013 graduates and congratulate them, and we just want to thank the Board and President
Thomas for your leadership during this difficult budgetary time. I’d be happy to answer any questions that you have for COAP.
The submitted COAP Report is as follows:
The Council of Administrative Personnel held the Fall General Membership meeting on October 15 with
Dr. Hawkinson representing Dr. Thomas to address the group. We appreciate this time with the
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University administration and are thankful for their commitment to the COAP employees of this institution.
The COAP Professional Development Committee hosted a program on October 25 for the membership titled, Back to Basics by Shari Rich of Eureka College. Ms. Rich is an alumna of Western Illinois
University and her talk focused on how to keep oneself marketable in the ever-changing workforce.
The Promotional Structure Committee submitted a draft of a document which addresses the recruitment and retention of new administrative professionals by establishing a structured program for promotion. The
Executive Committee has not discussed the draft as of this meeting but will be reviewing and discussing it in the upcoming semester.
COAP wishes to extend congratulations to the fall 2013 graduates and their families. We also send best wishes for a wonderful holiday season to the entire University community.
Faculty Senate Vice Chair – Bill Polley
Faculty Senate Vice Chair Bill Polley said thank you. You have our report, and I’d be happy to answer any questions.
Chair Early said thanks for supporting the SGA initiative about the Performing Arts Center. I appreciate that. Dr. Polley said definitely.
The submitted Faculty Senate Report is as follows:
The Faculty Senate has completed a very quiet fall semester. Compared to previous years, there were relatively few new courses or curricular changes brought for approval. I’m attributing this to the budget situation and the limitations on hiring.
Since the last BOT meeting, the Senate invited Jeanette Malafa to bring us up to date on the goings-on in
Springfield. There is obviously much interest in the pension situation as well as the specifics of the concealed carry legislation, textbook prices, and higher education budgets. We also heard from Library
Dean Michael Lorenzen about the requirements of SB 1900, which sets up a university committee to discuss open access to faculty publications. That committee is to be authorized and constituted at today’s
Board meeting.
The Senate also passed a motion in support of SGA’s resolution advocating for the release of state funds for the Performing Arts Center. We also considered the possibility of having faculty opt-out of receiving a paper copy of the WIU undergraduate catalog. Our Council on Campus Planning and Usage presented a report on whether stronger measures need to be taken to discourage texting while driving on campus.
FINANCE COMMITTEE REPORT
Report on Contributions
Trustee Cole said good morning. We’re going to go through Report No. 13.12/1, which will be given by
Vice President Brad Bainter. VP Bainter said thank you Lyneir. We are approaching $4.5M in contributions for the first half of the fiscal year, and nearing $62M in our campaign which ends December
31 st
. We are in discussions University-wide in regards to establishing goals for each unit between campaigns. I just want to touch on notable gifts that have happened that have taken us over that $60M mark since the announcement from earlier this year of the gift from Ken and Lorraine Epperson, but a corporate $100,000 from AT&T Foundation, $100,000 from Sodexo, $40,000 from the BP Foundation,
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$71,000 from the Caterpillar Foundation, $25,000 from the Chicago Mercantile Foundation, $32,000 from Mediacom, and $20,000 from Country Financial, and $50,000 from the Moline Foundation. Just personal gifts: over $300,000 now from the Gordana Rezab Estate, that’s assisting many different areas on campus; $100,000 from Herb and Nancy Strong, they know something that hopefully we know because it goes for a piano in the Performing Arts Facility when it’s completed. From former faculty members which is always good to see: $79,000 from Gil Belles; $44,000 from Bill and Jo Sanders;
$25,000 from Nick and Susan DiGrino; and then $50,000 from George and Mary Herman, George instrumental in the beginning of the Sports Management program, and that’s actually for scholarship support in the graduate program for Sports Management; $25,000 from Robert and Blenda Ontiveros;
$25,000 from Jim Shipp, which actually a member of the President’s Advisory Council, was supportive of our marketing efforts and wrote that to support our marketing efforts; $20,000 from John and Kim
Distefano.
Finally, the Foundation sold land recently for $5.6M. That will establish an endowment to support the
Department of Foreign Languages. Total Foundation assets are over $50M now, and the endowment has grown from $16M at the start of the campaign to nearly $40M by year end. I greatly acknowledge the support of Presidents Goldfarb and Thomas, both for their support of the campaign, and for their personal commitments to the campaign. The Foundation Board, the development officers, and all those that worked with the Foundation making this campaign a very successful one for the University.
Finally, the real Col. Rock calendars are on sale in the bookstore, so I encourage everyone to pick one of those up. Proceeds support Col. Rock.
And lastly, the University auditorium has been getting a lot of play recently, a lot of receptions and dinners in there. I feel good about that. There isn’t a building on campus that’s more historically significant to the University, and there’s not a room that’s more historically significant to the University.
We hope to renovate that, so if you get a chance to go in there you will see one of the large murals has had some work done on it. We hired a company in Chicago to come down and do some cleaning, so they actually took a line down the middle of one of the large murals and they cleaned one side of it. And that was the hundred and two, three years of dirt, grime, dust, or whatever that was accumulated on those murals, and you can see the difference it will make to renovate not only those murals, but the auditorium so I encourage you to take a look at that when you get a chance. Again, I thank the community. I thank the faculty and staff that supported the campaign and for all the successes that we have had because of that. I’ll be happy to answer any questions.
Trustee Epperly said I had a question in regards to I call it benefit analysis. We are increasing obviously our number of alumni every year, and so forth. Are we able to stay on top of, with the budgetary restraints, are we able to stay on top of adding them and staying in touch with them and you know who are the most likely to donate and hitting them hard and so on and so forth? With budget constraints, are we able to keep up with that? VP Bainter said well certainly the administration has been supportive of that. I think Dr. Thomas will tell you I’m in quite often asking for support for the fundraising efforts on campus, so it is an issue for us. We add about 3,000 names a year to our Alumni rolls, and it’s something we’ve talked about just yesterday with the development officers as well on how we’re keeping up with that. We’ve received campaign support, specific campaign support from the University throughout the course of this campaign and it’s an issue that we are continuing to address that we know are tough, that other universities are facing as well. So, at this point, as I said Dr. Thomas and I are constantly talking about how to raise more money for the institution, and the support has been there for us to do so, or else I don’t think the campaign would have been successful without that support, but certainly those are issues that we have to discuss and face. Trustee Epperly said negotiations are in progress. VP Bainter said well, I think we’re no different than any other areas on campus that are looking for additional funding.
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Report on Purchases of $100,000 - $499,999.99 Receiving Presidential Approval
VP DeWees said thank you. If you’ll recall at the last Board meeting we probably had six or seven pages of purchases in this category. Timing is the answer why we only have two this time, but I’d be happy to answer any questions if you have any.
Chair Early asked the WIUM allocation that’s for them to be able to carry the shows like “Wait, Wait,
Don’t Tell Me!” and those type of things? VP DeWees said yes.
Resolution No. 13.12/1: Purchases over $500,000
VP DeWees said this is a purchase for, it’s a contract for installation and repair of campus building automation systems. The University chose Delta Controls as their University-wide control system in
2009, so this is a contract through 2018. It’s possibly a very high estimate, but we have to get a bid in.
They have to bid on it, and we had to go to the PPB (Procurement Policy Board) to get approval for this, and it seems like it may be a little high. What I’m trying to say is we probably won’t spend that much money.
Trustee Ehlert Fuller moved to approve Resolution 13.12/1. Trustee Early seconded the motion.
Roll Call
Trustee Ashmore
Trustee Clawson
Trustee Cole
Trustee Early
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Trustee Ehlert Fuller Yes
Trustee Epperly
Trustee Hare
Yes
Yes
Yes Trustee Savala
Motion Carried.
Resolution:
WHEREAS Western Illinois University has a need for Delta Controls Building Automation System installation and repair; and,
WHEREAS the above mentioned project has been administered in accordance with the Illinois
Procurement Code and all other pertinent statutes and rules:
THEREFORE be it resolved that the Board of Trustees approves the contracting for
Delta Controls – Building Automation
ITEM DESCRIPTION: Continuous order for Facilities Management for Delta Controls
Building Automation System installation and repair for the period of 01/01/14 – 06/30/18.
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COST: $ 300,000.00 FY14 partial fiscal year (Jan-June)
$ 600,000.00 FY15
$ 600,000.00 FY16
$ 600,000.00 FY17
$ 600,000.00 FY18
$ 2,700,000.00 (FY14-18 total estimated contract)
RECOMMENDED VENDOR:
Entec Services, Inc.; Peoria, IL
FUND SOURCE:
SUMMARY OF BIDS:
Local
Not applicable. Sole Source purchase as Entec is the only regional supplier.
Resolution No. 13.12/2: Approval of 403(b) Vendors
VP DeWees said this is a housekeeping issue. We have had two companies that have fallen below the limit, and they have less than 10 participants in their plan so we’re seeking permission to remove Putnam and Ameriprise from our list of approved vendors.
Trustee Ehlert Fuller moved to approve Resolution 13.12/2. Trustee Hare seconded the motion.
Roll Call
Trustee Ashmore
Trustee Clawson
Trustee Cole
Trustee Early
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Trustee Ehlert Fuller Yes
Trustee Epperly
Trustee Hare
Trustee Savala
Motion Carried.
Resolution:
Yes
Yes
Yes
WHEREAS the Western Illinois University Board of Trustees Regulations provide that the Board will adopt a supplemental retirement plan for the employees of the Board to be known as the Tax
Deferred Supplemental Retirement Plan; and,
WHEREAS the Western Illinois University Board of Trustees Regulations provide for the Board to approve, suspend or remove vendors authorized to issue tax deferred supplemental retirement contracts under the Plan; and,
WHEREAS Western Illinois University does not contribute to or match contributions by participants to the Tax Deferred Supplemental Retirement Plan and neither Western Illinois University nor its participating employees bear any direct cost for administration of participant monies for the Tax
Deferred Supplemental Retirement Plan; and,
WHEREAS Western Illinois University’s Tax Deferred Supplemental Retirement Plan has two
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Plan vendors that have fallen below established limits by having less than ten participants for over two years:
THEREFORE be it resolved that the Western Illinois University Board of Trustees approves removal of
Putnam and Ameriprise Financial/IDS from the list of approved Western Illinois University 403b
Supplemental Retirement Plan Vendors for any new future business effective December 31, 2013.
Chair Early said thank you very much. I think before we continue we’re going to take a brief break.
What’s the typical time 10? President Thomas said 10-15 minutes. Chair Early said well, 15 minutes, boom. I’ll say 10-15, everyone will be wandering around. We’re going to take a 15-minute break, and then we will reconvene.
The Board of Trustees took a break at 10:07 a.m.
The Board of Trustees reconvened at 10:26 a.m.
ACADEMIC & STUDENT SERVICES COMMITTEE
Enrollment, Retention and Graduation Rate Information
Chair Early said welcome back. I’m going to turn it over to Trustee Savala who chairs the Academic and
Student Services Committee. Trustee Savala said Report 13.12/3: Enrollment, Retention and Graduation
Rate Information, Vice President Joe Rives. VP Rives said it looks like Andy’s ready to go. Director
Borst said so, I’ll keep my comments short to make sure that we have plenty of time for questions which
I’m sure that you’ll have some. We face a significant uphill battle with our enrollment. With declining number of high school graduates in the state of Illinois, especially among our primary markets. A bigger challenge that we face is the level of competition in the state. Four years ago there were 50 regional admissions counselors in the Chicagoland, of which we had four. Flash forward four years, now there are over 100 regional admissions counselors, so institutions outside of the state realize that Illinois is the second biggest exporter of students, behind New Jersey, and are sending recruiters to take students that would have traditionally been our target market.
And so, within the Board Report some of the challenges that we face that I want to talk about that are not in the report is that Dr. Biller talked about the MAP grant funding, and with the deadline moving from
March 1 to February 1. Last year, 95% of our MAP eligible students applied before the March 1 deadline.
Of those 95%, only half of them applied before the February 1 deadline, so there’s a significant risk of our students missing out on a good chunk of change which will allow them access to higher education and get them to enroll here.
Another big threat that we face is that yet another institution within the state, Governor’s State, will begin admitting freshmen next year. And so there’s more competition that we face for in-state students to pursue public education within Illinois.
Some of our biggest opportunities have been the President’s support of our summer yield, excuse me spring yield programs. I hope many of you saw the press release about our increased admissions standards and where we sit with applications for new freshmen, that’s part of the battle. The next step is to get them to convert and commit to coming to Western, and the biggest strategy that we have is to get those students on campus. The next biggest opportunity that we have is our new approach for Financial Aid processing, specifically packaging. One of our competitive advantages having a home grown technology system is that we can get financial aid packages into students’ hands a good two weeks to a month earlier than competing schools that are using more national and standardized systems like Banner or Datatel, so if we can get a better financial aid package into students’ hands first, we’re hoping that we can create that positive impression that students might choose to come to Western earlier on before they get their other
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aid packages from other schools. I think the biggest message that you need to take away from the report as well as anything that we are doing with enrollment is that if we maintain operations as is we can expect that enrollment will decline. It’s a lot of these initiatives that we’ve put in place that we expect that our target is to maintain our current enrollment where it’s at. I’m happy to answer any questions.
Trustee Epperly said several questions. One, it mentioned in there, is there an OAS study being done? Dr.
Borst said tell me what you mean by an OAS study? Trustee Epperly said the special…Dr. Borst said so the OAS review…Trustee Epperly said I thought it said some place in there…Dr. Borst continued so we did a review of the students who were successful within the OAS program, and that was part of the recent admissions standards, but in February Provost Hawkinson is going to bring in an outside consultant to do a review of all advising which includes OAS.
Trustee Epperly said ok. Just a couple things, I talked to Ken a second earlier. We talked a little bit about branding at the last meeting, but to me the biggest, one of the biggest things that we could do from a branding standpoint is to become what I call legendary with our attention to the students. There was an article in the Chronicle here a week and a half that I printed out that was very, very interesting article in regards to advising, and I talked a little bit with Cathy about what’s happening. This article went in to how many, to a large number of schools that are revamping their advising services. Just to quote a couple things, they’re offering new guidance on familiar questions about majors and job prospects, and through a survey that some students were taking this and that and so forth, just talking about how much more important it is and how much it helps retention. And then indirectly helps attracting students, and are we looking at our advising. Are we happy with it? That’s a loaded question there I guess, but are we looking at this and so forth. Provost Hawkinson said yes, very much so. As the President often says and as Andy says we can’t continue to do things the way we used to do them. That’s no longer an excuse. We have to bring best practices to the University in all areas. We’ve done a complete review of the Admissions program, and under Gary and Andy’s leadership we believe we’re bringing, continue to bring best practices here, and no stone unturned in new ideas. We’re doing that in other areas on campus. We’ve done it. We’re doing it, or we’re going to do it. A full review of those areas to bring best practices in as well, and one of those areas is advising, and there’s many, many other ideas out there. Actually President
Thomas sent Vice President Biller and myself to a conference exactly tied to this initiative to all kinds of best practices that bring students further along to college completion. One of the main components of that is advising, and new ideas. Some of the things in that article we are already doing. Some of the things in there are good ideas that we will follow up on as part of this full review, and this is truly a joint operation between our two areas. We’ll be absolutely delighted to share the consultants’ report with you when that’s completed. Trustee Epperly said ok.
Trustee Epperly said one other comment, and I’m a big believer in names, how you name something, but it caught my eye this one university named their advising center the Student Success Center, and it caught my eye, and I said how about the Leatherneck Success Center, but anyway, food for thought, and one just a couple comments. You maybe aware of some of this, but I took a tour and I saw SIU’s numbers in there and by chance I took a tour of SIU’s facilities here about two months ago. I was down in Missouri for a family reunion which is, rural Missouri is pretty exciting for a family reunion if you’re interested. But anyway, on the way stayed overnight in Carbondale and in fact fortunately Tommy Bell the Athletic
Director lined up a tour of their facilities for me, but just by chance. I was talking to him about something else and told him I was going to stop by there, but where I’m heading here is the individual that took me around is pretty neat because he was the number 2 guy in their facilities department. Young guy, like yourself, good looking, but anyway he took me on the tour, but the great thing about it he had a key to everything, so I saw anything I wanted to see. And I’m asking him all kinds of questions, this, this and this, but he made a comment it caught me, and I didn’t go into detail enough with him afterwards I felt about it. He said I used to be in charge of performing arts facilities and he said they changed that, took it away, and I said oh, took it away for what, do a bad job? He said no, we’ve eliminated all outside
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activities. He said there are no outside concerts. The only things that we’re putting on at Carbondale
Southern now are student-oriented things, and I said whoa that’s a pretty big change. And he said yes, he said we saved a lot of money and we’re redirecting that in other directions, but his point was…I was wondering how they’re doing some of these things, and that just caught my eye or caught my ear. I said very interesting that they were making some major cuts there and in certain areas and probably to redirect and that which we are too at some point, but I just found that interesting there on it. Otherwise that’s all I have. Thank you.
Trustee Clawson said Andy, this is great all this information how you’ve supplied this and drilled down. I noticed a couple times in here this, students are likely to transfer to a four-year university within 60-90 miles which is pretty critical and you and Joe know that and work with that. The question is why do we spend much time in Wisconsin? Who’s going to want to drive all the way from up there to down here? Is that kind of up in the air? Dr. Borst said our recruitment territory in Wisconsin focuses on high school seniors rather than transfer students, so high school seniors typically transfer within a 250 mile radius. We only go into the bottom two counties of Wisconsin, and treating it like an exploratory territory rather than a regular territory, so we still spend most of our time in Illinois and are just kind of moving slowly into
Wisconsin. Provost Hawkinson said if I can add. Just as the University of Missouri is recruiting like crazy in Chicago, we need to make our presence known in surrounding states and that’s why our signature programs have been formed to offer something to students in other states that they can’t get in their own state, unique programs. And I think that’s where a lot of the emphasis is probably in Wisconsin is the signature program and graduate school. VP Rives said the other thing to add to the conversation is the
Engineering program does get transfer students from Wisconsin’s technical and community colleges, because the distance from the Quad Cities isn’t really that far.
Trustee Ehlert Fuller said I agree that this material is really informative, easy to get through and very much appreciated. It seems to me, there’s such a wide range of new activities in the area of Admissions and retention and graduation rates, but maybe one of the most important elements is how you’ve driven that down into the organization generally and many individuals are responsible or are working on recruiting in the various colleges and not only the official representatives, but faculty and administrators I think that will spell success as much as anything. Dr. Borst said thank you.
Trustee Cole said I have a question. What is the number of students that are accepted into OAS? Dr. Borst said overall? Trustee Cole said yes, per year. Dr. Borst said per year, so we would accept probably about
1,500 students into the OAS class and the target is 400 new freshmen into that program each year. This last year we were under that number, and it’s the biggest reason why our freshmen were down. We had about 340 students into the OAS program. Trustee Cole said and in regards to the retention, does the
University still utilize open enrollment for the summer? Dr. Borst said we do not utilize the open enrollment. With the new admissions standards, we’re being more critical of the students that are applying to the OAS program. In fact, we’ve denied about twice as many students who have applied compared to last year. Specifically, we’re looking for increases in GPA looking from the Freshmen-
Sophomore year to the Junior-Senior year. We’re looking to see how they did in Algebra II, their attendance record, letters of reference as well as personal statements, so we were much more critical of students who apply to the OAS program who show potential to be successful, but maybe who have not demonstrated success yet. Trustee Cole said I brought that up because when I was here, I didn’t come through the OAS program, but the OAS program was very vibrant in that way where it allowed potential students to come in the summer prior to their freshmen semester, and I think with the competition is out here that may benefit the University again. I don’t know, but it’s just an area to look at. VP Biller said we are currently exploring what we call bridge programs for the summer where we can bring those students in like that and put them through an intensive either math or English or skill-building kinds of courses.
Funding is a difficulty there, because these students cannot use their federal financial aid for that summer, so we’ll be looking at appealing for many of the TRIO federal grants this past, but we’re looking at some
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of the private funding agencies: Lumina, the Gates Foundation, and others to see if there are opportunities there. That’s one of the things that Dr. Hawkinson and I found out when we went to that conference for the President, so hopefully that’s going to be an avenue that we’re going to be able to use to bring in more of those kind of students. President Thomas added one thing that we’ve been looking at is trying to get the federal funding in terms of what the TRIO program, and we have not been successful there and it has to do with the overall average salary in McDonough County. I think that’s what it is, so we’ve been told that we don’t qualify so that’s been an issue. We’ve been trying to find a way around it so we can get those kinds of funds to help those students during the summer and create, but we’re looking at other ways of creating our bridge programs as Dr. Biller has mentioned. Trustee Cole said back to the OAS, so can that number be increased per year, because I know you have a specific breakdown by gender, by race and all of that. Can that number be increased or does it have to remain the same per year? Dr. Borst said it can be increased through recruitment and targeted messages to high school students or really particular high schools in general. However, I don’t believe that open enrollment for that program would necessarily be a right strategy for our institution. The risk that we have is to admit students who are unlikely to succeed regardless of the amount of services that we offer. I do think that we can increase the amount of services that we provide, especially with advising and academic services. However, open enrollment may not be the approach to go. Trustee Cole said I think I was misunderstood. Open enrollment has nothing to do with the OAS program, ok. The open enrollment I’m talking about is for individuals who are already here who are on the bridge of flunking out, and I’m talking about for them to be able to come to summer school when they’ve been placed on academic probation or even academic suspension and have the opportunity to raise their grade point average up to a level where they can have re-entry in the fall. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s two different things that I was looking at. Dr. Borst said I understand.
Provost Hawkinson said and that program is still in existence, and so students can come back to improve their GPA during the summer. Trustee Cole said that’s what I wanted to know.
Trustee Clawson said Andy, on the top of page 35 it talked about, and you made mention about, Eastern and Southern doing what they call the financial aid leveraging and all that. President Thomas answered the question for me earlier about how they’re reallocating funds to make it work. Do we, are we leaning or looking at something like that? Dr. Borst said we are exploring something like that. Trustee Epperly mentioned about Southern’s increase in new freshmen and it’s through the financial aid leveraging program how they were able to achieve it. So for example, we know that they spent roughly about an additional $3M in student aid, and with about 286 new freshmen walking in the door we assume about
$10,000 in new revenue in tuition and fees, they almost broke even with the amount of money that they spent, but it created additional revenue for their auxiliary services, so in essence they bought their class.
Trustee Clawson said they reduced their standards also? Dr. Borst said No. Actually their average ACT went up by a full point which is a very significant jump for them, so they targeted money at mid-range and high ability students. Trustee Clawson said and Eastern, kind of a same scenario? Dr. Borst said less magnitude, yes. They had very minimal. They spent a large amount of money, but saw minimal impact, so their numbers went up only about 7 students. Trustee Clawson asked how do you get all this info? Dr.
Borst said we listen. Trustee Clawson said that’s pretty good, ok. Thank you.
Trustee Epperly said just one other comment just to commend you or commend the department from the standpoint I look at things like on 36 you mention Uversity, and I actually called Andy and said what’s
Uversity, but to me when you’re experimenting and trying all these different things out. It’s a facebook thing and an experimental thing and hey if it goes well then hey, we’ll keep it up, but those things to me are just excellent that you’re doing those things. And we go back it was mentioned last meeting also, but the increase in, minimal increase in standards I think over a period of time can make a huge difference in perception. I commend you guys on that stuff. Dr. Borst said thank you.
President Thomas said I just want to add that we all know that these are very difficult times in higher education and I say it over and over again, we have to do some things differently, and we appreciate you
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all working with us as we go through these changes in higher education and that we try different things and as you hear me say that if we keep doing the same things that we’ve done, we’re going to get the same results. We have to do some different things, and we have in terms of do best practice in what’s happening across the nation to deal with the budget situation as well as our enrollment challenges and any other challenges, so we appreciate what you are saying and this is a very healthy discussion, so I certainly do appreciate that, and we ask that you bear with us as we get through these very challenging times.
Thank you.
Trustee Hare asked does the University or is there a mechanism for students who are really, really interested in coming here, but yet maybe end up some place else? Is there, do they give a reason why?
Have we done some investigating if you will as to what is it that SIU is doing or somebody else has done in terms of why did they not pick WIU? Dr. Borst said ok, so the why is particularly difficult to get through, because those students are at other institutions and it’s tough to get a trustworthy number in response in terms of what particularly did we not do well. Trustee Hare said what do you think it would be? We are able to track where they go, and so if a student is not enrolling at Western, and this part is within the Board report so we can see who our competitors are. They’re mostly enrolling at other public state institutions in Illinois or two-year institutions. The largest competitor is for them to not enroll anywhere, so for a student, for us to accept means that they meet minimum academic standards and for them to not enroll at any institution leads me to believe that its largely financial, and as we know the gap continues to increase going from roughly $700 just a few years ago to over $5,000 now. I think especially students from the lowest income are looking at their maximum amount of financial aid that we can give them and saying we can’t make this work.
Trustee Cole said you know the University of Missouri is stealing a lot of kids from the State of Illinois right now. Dr. Borst said yes, they are. Trustee Cole said I mean a huge amount, and it doesn’t matter what background you come from they are doing a lot of recruiting over here. And like Phil said is there something that we can look at that will assist us in that, because I know a whole lot of kids that are now going there. And when I was on the Alumni Council and talking previously, how do we make, and I think many of you spoke about this before, Andy, how do we make Western the first choice as opposed to the last choice? And earlier in the year, the decision-making process? It seems that we come in in March and
April as opposed to October-November. We would like to close the deal by then. What can we do to enhance that?
Dr. Borst said so, we traveled to Naperville Central. This is a school that used to send us about 20 students every single year and this last year we got 20 applications and 3 enrolled students, and we asked their school counselors what are we doing wrong, and their response was nothing. They said you’re not doing anything wrong. It’s these other schools who are coming in and taking the students that would have been your bread and butter, and they’re coming in there and saying we’re SEC, we’re Big 10, come to us.
So, the question is how do we compete with a flagship university and I think the approach that we will be looking at, that we will be doing is that it’s better for some students to be a big fish in a small pond than the small fish in the big pond. To take that approach to going after students that this is the right fit for them, and the biggest advantage that we have over a flagship university is that our faculty actually want to be involved in the recruitment of students. Chairs especially are calling students. They’re writing hand written notes to students, and that’s just not happening at flagship universities. Trustee Cole said U of I is doing the same thing too. They’ve went another route in their allowing like our OAS program where they’ve started allowing a lot of students in on that note too. I don’t know but we need to increase the numbers. I was sitting here looking at them in regards to the freshmen from 2013 and Western is kind of low. 1,600 is really low actually, and we have to make a better concerted effort.
VP Biller said Trustee Cole if I may. We always know fundamentally in the recruitment and admissions process that students look at the program, the academic program, the place, and the price. That’s why part
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of our marketing effort that we’re working on is signature programs. We know we’ve got some great programs, I mean we have a lot of great programs, but we’ve got some signature programs that we’re putting out there. That’s the early part of the recruitment process. The price part really doesn’t begin until
January for every school because that’s when the financial aid applications come in and then we’re able to notify them what kind of award they have. We are working on streamlining that. We’re probably one of the first schools to get that information out to students to help affect that decision. And then you know the third part is place, and that’s why we put in program all these visit days. We want to bring you here to
Western, have you visit with our faculty, show you around our facilities because that really does increase the percentages of students who will be here, so those kind of things working in tandem I think we’re going to hopefully see, along with an increase in retention, a gradual building in those areas.
Trustee Epperly said there’s a book out there. I guess I just challenge the Board and actually everybody in the audience, this is required reading you’ll be tested on it at the next meeting. There’s a book out there entitled, David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell, his newest book out, but it was very interesting.
There’s a chapter in there about college education, and I would highly recommend reading that chapter because it was just kind of very interesting and eye-opening from a human behavior standpoint and so forth there so food for thought, and you will be tested at the next meeting.
Fiscal Year 2014 Transfer Student Report
VP Rives said so when you think of new student recruitment and retention there’s three levels. And you just had an extensive conversation about freshmen with the report prepared by Rhonda and Andy, and then earlier this morning you heard about new graduate student recruitment initiatives and Provost’s
Hawkinson’s remarks, and then that third category of students is new transfer students and new transfer students right now comprise about half of the enrollment of undergraduate students at Western Illinois
University. The report laid out initiatives and progress and challenges and opportunities for the
University. It is a fierce competitive market for transfer students and Western is doing really, really well.
If you’ve seen increases in new transfer student enrollment in the Quad Cities, primarily due to the linkages program that’s now being expanded to include the community colleges in Freeport and Rockford at their request. And in Macomb, you’ve heard of some of the new initiatives that were discussed and the statewide decline for all public universities and new transfer student enrollment is 9.4%. On the Macomb campus the decline was about 8%. It’s not an excuse, because we all know we have to do more to do better, but it’s a challenge faced by all, so innovation is going to be key, and I hope that came out in the report. With that, I yield to any questions you might have. And I want to thank Carolyn for calling for this report a couple years ago.
Trustee Ehlert Fuller said probably one thing to get an agreement on paper with the leaders of the community colleges, but another thing is drill that down to student body, and I suppose you have some plan. You are doing things. You have plans on how to get that word down, and spread that message as probably there are many agreements at each of those community colleges. VP Rives said for each of the linkages programs we have advisory boards with their community college. We meet quarterly at their community college, and it’s the ground people that are meeting, so it’s just not the people who sign the papers. Matter of fact, they don’t actually go to the meetings, but it’s the Admissions staffs working together; it’s the Advising staffs working together. It’s our Financial Aid representative talking with theirs, so that’s how the filtration happens, and then the best ambassadors for the programs are the students that have been through the programs. So in the Quad Cities now in our admissions events, we have linkages students talking about what does it mean to go to a community college and a university at the same time, and how did I navigate the system. Provost Hawkinson said one example of one of these kinds of initiatives, Dean Erekson and Associate Dean Drea have developed a program and this is through a direct relationship with a major community college, College of DuPage? Dean Erekson said Joliet and
Richmond. Provost Hawkinson said ok, Joliet and Richmond, wherein we will actually be providing through distance learning and other means the four-year degree on their campus for their students wherein
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also there will be a linkage wherein they can take courses during freshmen, sophomore year that will be seamless to go through Supply Chain Management. And the Richland is important because we’re getting support from Archer Daniels Midland Corporation, so we get some major funding from a corporate partner because they need supply chain people, and also up in the Chicago area. So, these are one of many, many links and initiatives that we’re trying to do with community colleges across the state.
Trustee Epperly said just a comment again going back to technology, and I know I’m beating a dead horse. The online learning and I just got to hammer the fact that our technology has got to be up to stuff for online learning. I’m not saying it’s not. I don’t know, but if it’s not up to snuff for online learning, the worst experience is to take a course online when the technology is terrible. And I say terrible, not good by today’s standards, and we may be there. I have no idea, but that’s food for thought, and I’m sure you understand that. Provost Hawkinson said I think actually that we are one of the leaders when it comes to technology and the best practices for our online courses. We have very strict requirements and training that faculty go through, and you’ve heard me report on this several years ago. We’ve been nationally recognized for our online courses, but the technology needs to be updated every year and that’s what we’re trying to do. We have everything in place to be one of the top programs in the country. As a matter of fact, we’re even ranked very high in U.S. News & World Report for our distance learning program.
Dean Erekson said I’d like to make a comment about technology with Joliet Junior College. It’s interesting what we’re looking at is part of it will be online courses, but a lot will be Codec courses like we do between here and the Quad Cities and John Drea said when they were testing it. When he could see, he could read the detail on the Pepsi can on the desk at Joliet Junior College, he knew that we had
HD connection, so the connection is phenomenal there. And we’ll have similar connection with Richland in Decatur, so that aspect of the technology, we are there HD right now, ready to deliver, and we have to thank our tech people for that. And of course that’s also got to be as good on the other side, and Joliet has it. I’m sorry to interrupt. Provost Hawkinson said no, that’s great. Thanks Dr. Erekson.
Fiscal Year 2014 Performance Report
VP Rives said several years ago the Board approved performance indicators to look at the overall impact on the Strategic Plan. What this report does is it compares the University to itself over time, to peer institutions, and to Illinois public universities. The data is available for you, and we are all here to answer your questions.
Resolution No. 13.12/3: Open Access to Research Task Force
Provost Hawkinson said I would like to invite the Dean of University Libraries, Dr. Michael Lorenzen forward to give a brief explanation as to what this resolution is about. Dr. Lorenzen said the Open Access to Research Articles Act requires all the public universities to put together a task force to investigate issues relating to open access publishing. This is a form of publishing which makes research available to the public. Currently, when journal articles are published, they go behind a firewall and you have to have a subscription to it or be affiliated with the university or an institution which subscribes. Open access publishing makes it available either through a university website, through an institutional repository, so people can access it free on the web, or available directly from the journal itself making it open. So, each university needs to appoint a task force to look at this and issue a report back by January 1, 2015 with some recommendations. The task force is to look at a variety of issues including how this might impact the academic freedom of faculty so they can publish where they want to publish and not be denied access to certain journals because open access policies, looking at how that might impact copyright, what the cost might be to the institutions to support open access publishing, because there is a cost still involved with it, it’s just shifted often to the author and the institution rather than to the publisher, looking at who this should apply to, should it apply to all employees, should it apply to grad students doing masters or dissertation research, and whether or not the entire state should have an institutional repository. The committee is to be made up of representatives of the administration, the library, and the faculty as well as a labor organization representing the union, and any regional campuses. And this resolution asks the
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Board to name the committee, and give President Thomas the ability to appoint replacements in the future, and that’s the brief summary. I’d be happy to answer any questions.
Trustee Cole said you said something about a cost. Is that a result of what we do here today? Do we incur that cost immediately or is it after you have completed a certain amount of research? Dr. Lorenzen said what we’re talking about in relation to publishing the journal, there’s a cost involved in that, and that’s why they’re charging a subscription. If we’re asking them to give the research away for free, then the funding for that research has to come from the other end, either directly from the author or the institution, so that’s one of the things the task force is to look at.
Trustee Cole moved to approve Resolution 13.12/3. Trustee Hare seconded the motion.
Roll Call
Trustee Ashmore
Trustee Clawson
Trustee Cole
Trustee Early
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Trustee Ehlert Fuller Yes
Trustee Epperly Yes
Trustee Hare
Trustee Savala
Motion Carried.
Yes
Yes
Resolution:
WHEREAS the Open Access to Research Articles Act (OARAA) was signed into law by Governor
Quinn on August 9, 2013; and,
WHEREAS as detailed in the OARAA, the work of the Task Force for the 2014 calendar year will be to
provide a report detailing their findings:
THEREFORE be it resolved that the Board of Trustees of Western Illinois University approves the following OARAA Task Force, and grants the University President the authority to name replacement members if vacancies occur during the existence of the Task Force:
Michael Lorenzen, Dean of University Libraries (Chair)
Nancy Parsons, Associate Provost for Undergraduate & Graduate Studies
James Schmidt, Associate Dean, College of Arts & Sciences
Linda Zellmer, Associate Professor, University Libraries
Robert J. Hironimus-Wendt, Associate Professor of Sociology
Lisa Miczo, Professor of Communication
1 Faculty Representative from Education
Colin Harbke, Associate Professor of Psychology (UPI)
Kanu Priya, Assistant Professor of Management & Marketing (QC)
1 Publisher Representative
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AUDIT COMMITTEE
Resolution No. 13.12/4: Annual Presentation of Auditing Department Charter
Director of Internal Auditing Rita Moore said as the Director of Internal Auditing we are required to follow certain standards for compliance reasons. This would include, within the charter you’ll see the statement of professional practices that says that we have to follow the International Standards for the
Professional Practices of Internal Auditors. This is also a mandate from the State that also indicates the state internal auditing standards board that we would follow this practice. These standards indicate that on an annual basis that the charter should be presented to the Board for approval. As far as our process goes the charter has been included. We have not had changes in the last year, but since we have a lot of new
Board members I wanted to go through a few things about the charter and a little bit about our department.
The charter defines what our mission and purpose and objectives, which are to assist management in the effective discharge of responsibilities, to meet organizational goals and objectives. The department is dedicated to improving University and Foundation operations by providing independent, objective assurance and consultant services, and we’re designed to add value and improve organizational operation.
We’re actually a department of two, and we have interns on an annual or on a quarterly basis. We work with the Accounting department and have a different intern each semester, and they work 120 hours on a voluntary basis, and then they get three hours of credit for that course. The charter also includes that we have to maintain independence and objectivity. It kind of lists the services that we provide which include assurance services and that goes along the lines of compliance with not only state and federal regulations, but also University policies and procedures. We provide consulting services, special investigations, and follow-up engagements. As far as the compliance goes, it’s who audits the auditors? We get audited on an annual basis also for the compliance for the Fiscal Control and Internal Auditing Act. It indicates that we have to do an annual plan that is basically a two-year plan that we update each year. We assist in the certification of internal control, and then we have an annual report that we put out at the end of September each year. As far as the department goes, I would like to extend a thank you to Michael Sartorius who is my assistant manager and all the interns that have helped us throughout the course of the program, and if you have any additional questions you can either contact me or if you go to our website there’s a lot of information there. And I’d like to extend that for any of the Trustees that we would be glad to do an orientation program for you, and that offer is extended to any of the departments of the University.
Trustee Early moved to approve Resolution 13.12/4. Trustee Cole seconded the motion.
Roll Call
Trustee Ashmore
Trustee Clawson
Trustee Cole
Trustee Early
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Trustee Ehlert Fuller Yes
Trustee Epperly
Trustee Hare
Yes
Yes
Yes Trustee Savala
Motion Carried.
Resolution:
WHEREAS Western Illinois University has a need to periodically review and present the Internal
Auditing Department Charter to the Senior Leadership team and the Board of Trustees (Board) to
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be in compliance with regulatory requirements and the Institute of Internal Auditors’
International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing ; and,
WHEREAS The Board has had several new members appointed since the last presentation where the
Charter was approved; and,
WHEREAS the Internal Auditing Department Charter includes the purpose of the Internal Auditing
Department, the organizational structure and authority of the department, the statement of professional practice, the state of independence and objectivity, the types of audit services, the audit objectives, the duties and responsibilities of the Internal Auditing Department; and,
WHEREAS the Internal Auditing Department Charter includes the primary responsibilities of the audit department, including: the planning of a two-year risk based audit schedule that is created and updated annually; performing the audit engagements by completing the planning, fieldwork and issuing reports of the findings, risks, recommendations and management’s action plans; and providing a summary of the Auditing Departments activities to the President and Audit
Committee on an annual basis by September 30:
THEREFORE be it resolved that the Board of Trustees is presented the Internal Auditing Department
Charter for annual review.
Western Illinois University Internal Auditing Department Charter
Mission: The Internal Auditing Department is dedicated to improving University and Foundation operations by providing independent, objective assurance and consulting services.
Purpose: Internal auditing is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization's operations. It helps an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control, and governance processes.
The internal audit function is an integral part of the organization’s control system; however, the internal audit review and appraisal process does not in any way relieve other University or Foundation personnel of the responsibilities assigned to them.
Organization and Authority: The Internal Auditing Department is a vital part of the University and
Foundation. The Department functions in accordance with University Policies and the Fiscal Control and
Internal Auditing Act (FCIAA) enacted by the State of Illinois (Illinois Compiled Statutes, 30 ILCS 10).
The Internal Auditing Department reports to administratively to the President of the University and functionally to the Audit Committee for the Board of Trustees of the University. The Department provides results of reports relating to the WIU Foundation activities to their Audit Committee. This permits independent and unbiased judgments essential to the proper conduct of audits. The Internal
Auditing department has free and unrestricted communication with management and members of the
Audit Committees.
In carrying out their duties and responsibilities, internal auditors will have full, free, and unrestricted access to all University and Foundation activities, records, property and personnel. No officer, administrator, or staff member may prohibit the internal auditors from examining any University or
Foundation record, or access to personnel which is deemed pertinent to the audit, review or investigation .
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Internal auditors will handle any information obtained during a review in the same prudent manner as the custodian of such information.
Statement of Professional Practice: Western Illinois University is committed to the professional practice of internal auditing. The Internal Audit Department will function in compliance with the FCIAA and follow the by-laws and requirements established by the State of Illinois Internal Auditing Advisory
Board. This includes upholding the principles of integrity, objectivity, confidentiality and competency as defined in the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) Code of Ethics, and adhere to the International
Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing (Standards) adopted by the IIA . Standards or guidance issued by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the General Accounting
Office or other governing agencies may also be followed if appropriate.
Independence/Objectivity: Internal Auditing staff will be independent of the activities that they review.
The internal auditor has no direct responsibility or any authority over the activities or operation he/she reviews. Independence requires that the internal auditor carry out work freely and objectively. The internal auditor should not implement accounting procedures, controls or prepare financial records that could compromise the auditor’s independence. Internal auditors may act in a consulting, advisory role without adversely affecting their objectivity.
Auditing Objectives: The objective of the Internal Auditing Department is to assist management in the effective discharge of their responsibilities to meet organization goals and objectives. To accomplish this, the Department will furnish management with analyses, recommendations, counsel and pertinent information concerning the activities reviewed or investigated. The attainment of this overall objective involves such activities as:
1. Determining if the overall system of internal control and the controls in each activity under audit are adequate, effective, efficient and functioning.
2. Determining the reliability and adequacy of the accounting, financial, technology and reporting systems and procedures.
3. Ensuring risks are identified and managed.
4. Developing the skill set and competence of the Internal Auditing staff.
5. Determining if University and Foundation activities are in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles; policies and procedures; state and federal laws and regulations; contractual obligations and good business practices.
6. Ascertaining the extent to which the organizations assets exist, are properly accounted for and are safeguarded from losses through theft, fraud or other means.
7. Recommending operational improvements.
Audit Services:
The Department of Internal Auditing performs internal operational, technology, compliance and financial related audits of programs, functions, services, departments and accounts under the budget authority of the University or Foundation. There are four primary types of audit services provided:
1. Assurance Services: Assurance Services provide an objective review and examination of evidence for the purpose of providing an independent assessment. The scope and nature of services include review and evaluation of: operational efficiencies and effectiveness; adequacy of policies and procedures; reliability of financial and operational systems; compliance with regulatory requirements at the University, State and Federal levels; safeguarding of assets and accomplishment
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against stated goals and objectives. Information Technology reviews may be included as part of the assurance services.
2. Consulting Services: Consulting Services are advisory in nature and include such items as: assisting in the recommendation of standards and techniques of control to be applied in developing systems and procedures; lending assistance in systematic analysis of operations, activities or data; or providing limited training relating to controls, compliance and/or governance processes or frameworks. The nature of consulting services will be agreed upon with management. This may also include serving in an advisory capacity on committees. When performing consulting services,
Internal Auditing will not assume management’s responsibilities in order to maintain their objectivity and independence.
3. Special Investigations: Investigations evaluate and examine allegations, or observed symptoms or patterns of unethical business practices, and/or financial or operational misconduct to determine if the allegations are substantiated or that behaviors are actually inappropriate. These steps are also taken to prevent additional occurrences from happening.
4. Follow-up Engagements: Follow-up engagements evaluate plans and actions taken to correct reported conditions or deficiencies.
Primary Duties and Responsibilities:
1. Prior to June 30 of each year, develop and have approved by the University President and the
Boards of Trustees-Audit Committee a flexible, two-year, risk based audit plan identifying audits scheduled for the pending fiscal periods. The plan should include risks and control concerns identified by management and address compliance requirements from the FCIAA process.
2. Implement the plan by performing internal operational, compliance, technology and/or financial audits of programs, functions, services, departments and accounts that are under the budget authority of the University and the Foundation.
3. Adjust the plan and address special request audits, reviews or investigations as requested by management or deemed necessary by regulations or risk assessment.
4. Ensure major information systems of internal and accounting administrative controls are reviewed at least once every two years. This includes review of the design of major new information systems and major modifications of those systems before their installation.
5. Report all material results of audits, reviews, or investigations to the appropriate levels of management and the Audit Committees.
6. Prepare an annual report by September 30th summarizing the scope, results and status of implemented action plans; and the results and activities of the Internal Auditing Department activities throughout the previous fiscal year.
7. Report annually to the President and the University regarding the accomplishments of the
Department, the Audit Plan, operational activities, budget, and staffing of the Internal Auditing
Department.
8. Establish and reporting a follow-up process to monitor and identify if management actions have been effectively implemented, or that senior management has accepted the risk of not taking any action. This includes proper disclosure the Audit Committee when risks have been accepted.
9. Coordinate with external auditors and regulatory agencies concerning the scope of work to be performed to reduce duplication and optimize audit coverage.
10. Assist management in the coordination of the FCIAA certification of internal controls for the
University and Foundation.
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11. Assist in the investigation of potentially fraudulent activities and ensure due diligence is performed to identify fraud in planned audits.
12. Periodically communicate and meet with the Senior Cabinet and Audit Committee to provide results of audits, investigations and reviews.
13. On an annual basis provide the Internal Audit Charter to the Senior Cabinet and Audit Committees for review and approval.
GENERAL DISCUSSION AND ACTION ITEMS
Facility Assessment Report
Director of Facilities Management Scott Coker said in your Board packet is our Facilities Assessment
Report. Basically, it is summarizing the things that we’ve completed the last year, are in progress now, and what we plan to do for the next year. I’m open for any questions on that. I do have a presentation that
I want to go into if there are no questions currently.
Chair Early said I’ll just ask you a quick question on the electronic message boards that have been put up.
What kind of messages appear on those? Mr. Coker said so those were put in by Connexio, which is a private company, on our campus. There are six locations. The Union, Scheduling Office is in charge of what messages go there. Typically, so I’m not too familiar with them, but typically it’s events across campus so it’s scheduling events, things that are scheduled, and then there’s also advertising that rotates the messages of course.
President Thomas said you want to comment on that Gary? VP Biller said certainly, these message boards were put in at no cost to the institution. The cost is assumed by the Connexio company, and at the point in time where the advertising pays for them we will actually begin receiving a percentage of revenue from the advertising. They have worked in agreement with us in selecting the advertisers so that for instance we’re not in competition with our Athletic program who’s asking local advertisers. They are primarily going after national ones, and then we’re able to put our messages about student activities and events and deadlines and those things out there across campus. One of the things that we have noticed that has improved is prior to this we used to put these notices out on an email system called Tele-Stars, and I think there’s probably 6 million Tele-Stars went out since the system started, and 3 million of those were over student activities, and those kind of things. We have been able to eliminate those and hopefully people now are paying attention to the Tele-stars information that’s a little more important to them. We’ve had a lot of side benefits from it, and again has been at no cost to the institution. Mr. Coker added yes, and we also worked really hard to put those where the students are walking across campus, so it’s for the students.
Mr. Coker continued what I wanted to go through briefly was a presentation here to talk about our planning process for facilities, so basically how as we move forward what projects do we bring forward.
Obviously, we have more projects than we have funding for so what’s our process to do that. So, go ahead
Doug. For the most part, we are entirely, we have to start with our Strategic Plan, so this tells us what’s our guiding principles, where are we headed. Go ahead. From that there’s a long-term plan that Dr. Rives is going to speak about that’s also helping guide our process, and I’m just kind of mentioning the things that we are reviewing as we go through our planning process. For the Quad Cities, there’s their Master
Plan, their Facilities Master Plan that they’ve worked on, and they’re well underway with Phase II there, proceeding very quickly. Go ahead, but where we get very involved is our Facilities Master Plan here in
Macomb on the Macomb campus, so that’s what we work with. We finalized that just last year, and the
Board approved it. Go ahead. And I just wanted to highlight again the charge that Dr. Thomas gave us for this Facilities Master Plan, a visionary and implementable strategies, so things that we can look forward to accomplish for the students, so it’s about the student experience here on campus. And then we ended up with the Facilities Master Plan that we finished as I mentioned in December of last year. Go ahead, so
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now that’s a working document that Master Plan, and it’s a booklet that we hand out to folks, that’s our guideline. To move that forward, we have a Master Plan implementation team on campus, so this is a very diverse group of folks that are the movers on campus to help us move forward that Master Plan. To feed into that, we have to do our Facility Condition Assessment (FCA), so this is viewing, this is stepping back and looking at all of our facilities. And it looks at them from a system-wide look, so about four years ago we looked at what are the, how are the plumbing systems, the HVAC, the roofs, so this is where we came up with our large deferred maintenance number. You know the $500M of deferred maintenance that we have that was the outcome of our FCAs, and then from that we targeted our COPS projects for the biggest priority things so that’s why the FCAs are very important. And so we had a document from 2009, that summarizes all of our buildings. You know what are the major priorities that we need to look at from a system point of view with plumbing, HVAC, roofs, and so that helps us target those. We’re in the process right now of updating this, so we have done quite a few projects on campus so now we want to get those in our report so we’ll have a new report for next year. And we’ve just now started our campus space study program, so go ahead.
So this is now the FCAs look at systems and buildings. Now the space study looks at individual classrooms, laboratories. So we’re going to go through this process quantitatively. How many classrooms did we have? Of what type? How many labs? So, we have that information in a Registrar’s database, but we really need to step back and look at where we are going with that in the future. Also, qualitatively what’s the quality of our spaces, our classrooms? We’re going to evaluate them on a type A, B, or C, and what this means is as we move forward if you think about the teaching style and kind of boil it down to the bottom changing pedagogy, when you have a hard classroom what’s the teaching style so a lot of our classrooms are set up with lecture hall style. Well that’s, moving forward that’s not how classrooms are going to be designed. We want to have flexible spaces. You go with the armchair tablets. It’s not what students need for the future. They bring a laptop and a tablet, so we need more flexible spaces so we have to evaluate what we have to know where we’re going to go in the future. And then a type A, B, or C, if it’s a type A classroom it has the right aspect ratio. It’s setup it can be a good classroom. A type B has the good bones to the classroom but it needs to be improved, and a type C room maybe is something that should be an office space or should be some other space. So, let’s make good classrooms here. Then we’re also looking at classroom utilization, how heavily do we schedule, what’s our scheduling efficiency? That’s all part of this space planning process that we’re going through, so that as we move forward that’ll help us look at what we need to do to improve our classrooms.
Once we’ve finished that or as we’re doing the space planning, we’re also going to be updating our programing document for our science building. This was done about five years ago. Times have changed.
The programs have changed. The administration has changed, so we need to update this, and this will feed into our capital request to the State. So we need to make sure that what we want now is what we’re asking the State for. So we’re going to be updating that programming for the building.
So, this will all feed back to the Master Plan implementation team. Go ahead Doug. From our Master
Plan, we had a couple tools that came out of that that we can work with so, and we started this last summer, tactical improvements, so one of the projects that we can go with the funding that we have paint a classroom, improve a hallway, replace some floor tiles, ceiling tiles, and so we’re going to look across colleges so we’re touching every area, so these are the hands-on things that we can do every summer just to improve them. Go ahead. And then also we have a strategic building renovation matrix, so this is big picture trying to decide as we move forward what buildings we want to remodel. Not just individual classrooms, but a decision matrix instead so we have a data-driven process to decide where we are headed with remodeling buildings, and that feeds into our capital project list. Go ahead, so then those things feed into our capital request to the State. Number one on that is our science building, but farther down we have building remodels that we’re going to request in the future. Go ahead. And then from those, the projects that are ongoing, not large capital but medium type projects, we are generating a list of
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needs and of course from facilities I’m going to say the needs are new roofs, new piping, things to keep, to let the buildings continue to operate let us continue to have classrooms. The wants are the list of things that improve the look: painting classrooms, the Grand Entrance sign is a want that we need to do so we improve how we look to campus and to our students, so that’s a real brief summary of what we do here with our planning. One more, Doug. And it’s been mentioned several times today that this is the latest and greatest picture of our Grand Entrance sign, so I’ll mention again and invite everyone to the ribbon cutting at 1:30 p.m. Any questions about the process that I’ve outlined there? Thank you.
Fiscal Year 2013 Master Plan Update
VP Rives said this is really a two-part presentation. Scott showed you our planning efforts, their planning efforts in facilities, and then what I get the opportunity to do is to show you the fruits of their labor, the projects that have advanced during the last couple of years. As Doug prepares the slide show, I do want to say what a great honor it’s been to work with Scott on this. We were invited speakers in St. Louis to talk about our master planning process and the quantitative tools that basically Scott developed, and that many universities have been asking for, so it’s been great to do that and we look forward to going back nationally and presenting on and here are the results.
So, we’re going to take a look at the results on both campuses. This is an annual report you get, and
Christi sorry to make you run, but could you cut the back lights too? So, go ahead, Doug, let’s go. You as a Board approved the Master Plan as Scott said, and you had asked that we engage our master planning, our physical planning process according to five guiding principles. Those principles are going to be the basis for the presentation this morning.
So that first guiding principle is enlivening the academic environment, and you had defined it as new and renovated facilities. So, I’m going to illustrate with four examples of new and renovated facilities that have occurred over the last year. So, obviously we’re ready to go on the design planning for the Center for the Performing Arts. A great facility got even greater with the most generous gift from the Eppersons.
As Brad has talked about several times, the lobby will be renamed the Dr. Ken and Lorraine Epperson
Lobby, a beautiful transgression through campus, and opportunities to display artwork for students, faculty, staff, and community members to enjoy, so again, we always carry in our hearts, thank you to
Ken and Lorraine. When construction starts the current Memorial Hall parking lot will be taken offline, and Scott and his team have designed a solution to have replacement parking at the band practice field which obviously would be relocated then. Long term and institutional conversations to follow, the Master
Plan suggests this location for structured parking.
The Art Gallery, as you see on my right hand side. We have a wonderful collection and Ann Marie
Hayes-Hawkinson is doing super work, but she’s limited in her display area. However, as Doug clicks you’ll see facilities upgraded and introduced second floor space, and even though it’s small, a small area can display wonderful artwork.
You as a Board asked for new construction, and here are the projects as Scott alluded. So, the first is a new science building to modernize. So, the building can have that new look as Scott suggested, and it will be revisited. Go ahead Doug. And then the science complex planning is in two stages. You also approved going forward on a new Visual Arts Center to consolidate and modernize instruction for the Department of Art. You also called for a renovation of Stipes, and I picked this picture because the building was built in the 60s and it’s very Partridge Family looking. You also approved going forward on a new education building. Horrabin was built in the early 60s as a temporary building and it clearly, as Doug clicks, does not reflect the needs of a modern College of Education and Human Services. It still has the remnant look of a high school. You also approved moving forward for capital renewal funding, and you heard that renewal funding will be for modernizing systems. This is a look at a computer guided system, and I’ll talk more about it later.
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So Doug will click on to our second guiding principle. You defined the student experience as recreational and housing opportunities. Here’s what I’m going to talk about in the area of recreation and housing. The
University Union remodel that Dr. Biller talked about, the first phase focuses on food. The Union is a heavily trafficked place for Western Illinois University. The Food Court has been remodeled and we heard the jokes about the furniture at our last meeting. Murray Street Cafe, this is what it looks like now, but in a few months it will look like this. The Lamoine Room currently under renovation looks like this, and will soon look like this. The north terrace currently under construction will look like this. The
Spencer Recreation Center, again, a very heavily trafficked area of almost 275,000 card swipes or entries into the facility in one year. Another recreational opportunity is the corn maze, and just as Doug clicks to give you perspective if you haven’t been through it. It’s really cool. I did it for the first time this year. The
40-foot climbing tower is also available to patrons at Horn Field Campus.
Congratulations to Housing as we begin Housing. This was their 100 th
year, is their 100 th
year not was. It all started with Monroe Hall which was quickly renamed Grote Hall, and there you have a picture of the facility in the portico, and I think it’s really cool on the hundredth year that one of the biggest renovation projects in this institution’s history was re-opened. So, here’s a look at the exterior of Thompson, and then we can go ahead and click into Erin’s room and see how you can remodel your room. Below Erin’s room is a new HVAC system for three of our primary residence halls.
Third, is strengthening campus identity. First impressions is what you asked us to focus on, so here’s what I’m going to talk about. The Grand Entry, and it is miraculous at night as you’ve said. What I think is really cool is the Master Plan talks about there are multiple entries and we have definitely hit it with the
Grand Entry, but we did not lose site of the former entryway that we had at Western Illinois University.
And a secondary area people come from is the west, so this has been placed out by Ball Fore on West
Jackson Street, and it’s a great example of institutional sustainability, reusing what we have.
I love this quote from President Thomas at Founders’ Day this year that “we’ll become the most beautiful campus in the State of Illinois, if not the nation,” and I think we’re well on our way. You can see our tree plantings for the year. We would have been positive but for the Emerald Ash Borer, but you can see that
Tara and her team have been very proactive. As Doug clicks, you’re going to see the Tree Campus USA designation criteria that Julie spoke about at the last meeting. With all these trees and plantings, we obviously have to take care of what we have. The Brophy Plaza if you haven’t had an opportunity to experience it as well as Wetzel Park. This is really neat and I didn’t know about it until I was preparing for this presentation for you what the Commemoration ’75 was, and it’s to symbolize in 1975 where
Western Illinois University was, but Professor Potter, Emeritus Professor Potter, through the L.I.F.E. program has started to label all of the campus art in the exterior space. And if you walk around Western and you see figures that are familiar you go up and read there’s a lot of great history and tradition for why things are placed where they are placed. It’s really interesting to read all of this stuff.
Classroom enhancements is first impressions as well. Here you can see more modern furniture in Stipes.
Again, an electronic classroom in Stipes that was installed this year. I’m going to tease you with the
Morgan Hall entry, but if you go into it if you have free time this weekend, it’s much lighter and brighter and its one of those examples of projects that Scott talked about. First impressions can cost little money, but have significant impact. Hainline Lobby is another example of a small project that’s had a big impact.
Campus identity is our Rocky on Parade program, and there you can see Rocky next to his fiberglass counterpart, and I believe it was 13 of these, and Brad can correct me if I’m wrong, 13 or so of the
Rockys were purchased and placed all around Macomb. And there’s Cathy with her Rocky outside her office. If you look closely on University Drive and Western Avenue, you will see 200 paws that the students painted in advance of Homecoming. Identity and communication you just talked about, here’s an example of what the Connexio sign looks like.
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So the fourth priority or guiding principle. As related to the Strategic Plan, there have been enhancements both in technology and efficiency, so this is one of President Thomas’ favorite pictures. Keep a look on the left as Doug clicks. The smoke house, the bag house, and the ash collection silos are gone. The data center work that we’ve talked about for several years is done, congratulations to Dr. Frazier. University
Technology continues to upgrade classrooms, labs.
And the fifth guiding principle which you asked us to focus on long-term projects broken into manageable chunks over time. So, as examples of those projects I’m going to walk through three quickly. If you were at the door of the new Women’s, or renovated Women’s Soccer locker room and we’re able to enter you would see it’s been upgraded. If you do the strength and conditioning center, you will see new equipment.
You’ll see new shot clocks at Brophy. The flag poles and not in this rendering, but one of the significant enhancements this year is the new video scoreboard that Dr. Biller and his team got. The dream to modernize the complete renovation.
You as a Board have authorized bonds and the steam line has been a multi-year project. Here you can see what it was. Basically our predecessors long before all of us just buried steam lines in the ground and you can see they had to be dug out and they were full of surprises. The new approach has steam tunnels mapped, efficient. Doug’s going to click, and you’re going to see those projects that have had roof repairs, asbestos and HVAC. As you walk campus, you will see numerous water bottle refilling stations.
Also in the multi-year approach to sustainability and enhancements, you will see more and more of the new trash and recycle receptacles. That’s a picture of those that are right outside this building. I thought this was interesting. Students and some others did a tree tagging program in our sustainability efforts to show what a tree gives back in economic return. 350 relates to the carbon footprint. This was a picture of a student in the class project planting the flowers that bloomed outside the library.
So that’s in Macomb, now in terms of the Quad Cities the primary question, as Doug clicks, is what are you going to do with the building. And so, through President Thomas’ direction, Jeanette’s working to get special legislation so we can sell the building and retain the profits to be used for educational purposes. In addition to that, I reallocated $80,000 to maintain all of our equipment on 4-year rotations, technology both that you see and that you don’t see. Go ahead, Doug, one more time. Phase II, many have talked about it’s on time. I also want to say it’s on budget, and here’s the crew from Macomb and the Quad
Cities and the community that designed Phase II. And that’s the Master Plan they designed, so the first,
I’m going to take you through where the building construction is, and first we’re going to look out at the
Mississippi River, so at the start of the semester, those two buildings out front looked like this. It’s coming together nicely here. And it will look like that when we’re all said and done. That’s the view for classrooms to give you a perspective. Students will really enjoy a beautiful river view. Go ahead and click one more time, Doug. Now we’re going to look at the south part of the campus at the start of the semester, yesterday, within July. Another click, we’ll look at the West end of campus at the start of the semester, yesterday, by July. One more look into our quad, the start of the semester, yesterday, by July. These are the folks. This is called Quad Cities Facilities Implementation Team. They collaborate with Macomb and work on all aspects of the move in terms of planning, preparation, engagement, and they give frequent tours. Wrong way Doug, you’re giving away all my magic. As, ok so click, as we work on Phase II there’s been a group that will be coming together in January to start to work on Phase III, the preprogramming design. It has representation from the City of Moline. It has representation from both campuses at WIU. The train depot, the city, and IDOT have agreed to an FY15 relocation of the depot to our property by the railroad tracks. It will be used, after it’s remodeled as a student welcome and organizational center at the request of students.
To give you an update on a couple of the Macomb facility projects, excuse me, Moline facilities projects engaged in. Just on my left hand side it is the new hotel construction for it will start this March. On my
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right hand side is the new train depot. Construction for it will start in March, and the funds have to be spent and the facility by funding statute has to be ready to go in December. Trains are coming in 2015, they will be new cars. The privately owned housing next to Western Illinois University – Quad Cities is known as The Mills. The developers have put this rendering before the Moline City Council. You will note that flags of the different institutions are shown. That’s their speakers’ cue to help them remember that these apartments are available to all students in the Quad Cities, Western students, Black Hawk students, Augustana students, Trinity students, etc..We’re excited that private development has chosen to come near us, and we’re excited that whoever from higher education can live there. By their funding source, if you’re not a student in higher education in the Quad Cities, you cannot live there.
So as you look around both campuses, I think we’re meeting your tenet to enhance the students’ experience in facilities, grounds, technology and infrastructure, to help get the students to the finish line, so with one last click, again we’re all here to answer your questions, and I hope you enjoyed the look around both campuses.
Report on Concealed Carry
Chair Early said ok, next we’ll move to report 13.12/9, the Report on Concealed Carry, OPS Director
Scott Harris. Director Harris said good morning. I think everyone realizes that the State of Illinois passed legislation for concealed carry. It should take effect in early 2014, so as a result of that the packet that the
Concealed Carry Policy that you have in your packet will bring us into compliance with state statute. How does it impact WIU? I think that’s probably the biggest question everybody has. Prior to the enactment of concealed carry people were exempt from bringing a weapon onto certain locations and the University was one of them. The only ones that could do that was public safety, police officers doing business on
WIU campus, ROTC, or any event approved by the campus such as the Turkey Shoot that was held as a fundraiser this last November. Now we run into concealed carry, really nothing has changed. Nobody, if you had a concealed carry permit, you cannot bring it on to campus. You can’t come into a residence hall.
You can’t come into Sherman. You can’t come into any of our dining facilities, but what you can do is you can drive onto our property, park in our parking lot, leave your concealed carry weapon in your vehicle either in a case which is determined to be a glove compartment and/or get out of your vehicle and place it in your trunk. You come onto campus, you do your business, visit your son or daughter, and you go to leave, you go back. If you stored your weapon in the trunk of your vehicle, you retrieve your weapon, get back in your vehicle and exit campus. So really the impact on us is minimal in that we’ve just allowed citizens to come on with the weapon, but it has to stay in the vehicle. The policy was drafted by the University attorney with assistance from Digger Oster and myself. This was also done in consultation with other university attorneys throughout the state, so we have a pretty consistent policy statewide on university campuses in concealed carry. Any questions?
Long Term Planning Update
Chair Early said I think I jumped a report. The Long Term Planning Update? Is that ok. You want to just blow through that. VP Rives said yeah, I do. Chair Early said you want to talk about it at all? VP Rives said oh, did you want me? Are you finishing this? Chair Early said yeah, I don’t think we have any…Kerry McBride said there’s no vote on this. Chair Early said yeah, there’s no vote on this or anything.
VP Rives said ok, in terms of the Long Term Planning Report, you have the material before you. It discusses working on the commission’s persistence and completion initiative. I have the advantage of being a mentor for the project and a co-chair of the team that’s going through it here at WIU. I just engaged in two days of training on being a mentor, and so I want to you talk to about that a little bit so you know what the institution’s going to be going through. We will have a data mentor assigned to WIU and they will be coming to campus sometime in January-February when we can align schedules to help us see what retention data we have, what completion data we have, what groups we would like people to talk
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to. Gary and I are co-chairing this by the way, and then they’ll ask us some thought-provoking questions that we might not have thought about or we might have thought about. Right now there’s a team consisting of three people, two from the Quad Cities, and one from Macomb that are in St. Charles learning about the mentors coming and here are practical steps to get ready for that mentors’ visit. And so, then Gary and I will lead a team back to St. Charles in March where we will take the three research questions which focus on retention of Macomb students, retention of Quad Cities students, retention of online students, and distill down to what is manageable and what do we have. Again, this is avant garde.
This is cutting edge. We are the first of one of fourteen of 1,900 institutions that will be going through this process, and it was the Western Illinois University recognition specifically you might remember a few years ago the Lumina grant which showed we have better persistence rates than expected based on entering characteristics. It was our brand name and our expertise that got us into this commission initiative, so Gary, I think I’ve covered it in case there’s anything you want to add? VP Biller said I think you got it covered. Thank you. VP Rives said with that Cathy if there are any questions Gary will be happy to answer them.
Resolution No. 13.12/5: Release of June 7, 2013 and October 21, 2013 Executive Session Meeting
Minutes
Trustee Cole moved to approve Resolution 13.12/5. Trustee Ehlert Fuller seconded the motion.
Roll Call
Trustee Ashmore
Trustee Clawson
Trustee Cole
Trustee Early
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Trustee Ehlert Fuller Yes
Trustee Epperly Yes
Trustee Hare
Trustee Savala
Motion Carried.
Yes
Yes
Resolution:
WHEREAS pursuant to Section 5 ILCS 120/c of the Open Meetings Act, the Board of Trustees of
Western Illinois University will eliminate the recordings of the minutes of September 21, 2012; and,
WHEREAS pursuant to Section 2.06(c) of the Open Meetings Act, the Board of Trustees of Western
Illinois University has reviewed the minutes of the executive session minutes of June 7, 2013, and
October 11, 2013, to determine whether the need for confidentiality still exists with respect to all or part of the minutes:
THEREFORE be it resolved that the Board of Trustees of Western Illinois University approves for public disclosure at this time the following executive session minutes: October 11, 2013, and that the Board of Trustees of Western Illinois University has determined that the need for confidentiality still exists and it will review the June 7, 2013, minutes again at the March 28,
2014, Board Meeting to make a final determination with regard to its release.
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Resolution No. 13.12/6: Revision to Board Regulations, V.J., Mandatory Fees – First Reading
Matt Bierman said thank you. This is merely a clean-up. We’ve passed student fees over the last several years. Some of these dating back a long time, and they haven’t been cleaned up in policy. I ran across it, and I’m suggesting the change in front of you, so I’d be happy to answer any questions.
Trustee Ehlert Fuller moved to approve Resolution 13.12/6. Trustee Hare seconded the motion.
Kerry McBride said just procedurally before we call the roll. This and the next resolution are changes to the Regulations , so if you approve today we would then go to the campus community for their comments.
We would try to collect those online, and then we would come back in March for a final roll call for action. And at that time if a vote is yes, we would move forward with the changes.
Trustee Epperly said just curious, why was Rec Center fee crossed out. Mr. Bierman said it actually is a part of the revenue bond fee. It needs to move under the auxiliary, so it remains there as G number 1.
Again, this is just clean-up.
Roll Call
Trustee Ashmore
Trustee Clawson
Trustee Cole
Trustee Early
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Trustee Ehlert Fuller Yes
Trustee Epperly Yes
Trustee Hare
Trustee Savala
Motion Carried.
Yes
Yes
Resolution:
WHEREAS the Western Illinois University Board of Trustees must approve changes to regulations prior to implementation; and,
WHEREAS the Western Illinois University Board of Trustees have previously added and changed mandatory fees:
THEREFORE be it resolved that the Western Illinois University Board of Trustees approves the First
Reading of the revision to the Regulations Section V.J – Mandatory Fees.
Section V. Administrative Affairs
Subsection: J. Mandatory Fees
1.
Definition
2.
Mandatory fees are defined as tuition and other fees established by the Board which all students are assessed as a prerequisite for registration unless a waiver or other exemption has been authorized by the Board or by statute.
3.
Tuition
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The Board shall annually review and approve tuition rates.
4.
Other Mandatory Fees
Board approval shall be required to establish or change the amount of any mandatory fee. In addition to tuition, mandatory fees which may be established at the University include the following:
Macomb Fees a. Activity fee b. Athletic fee c. Health Care fee d. Computer Technology fee e. Publication fee f. Talent Grant fee g. Recreation Center fee h . g.
Revenue Bond fee
i. Recreation Center fee
ii. University Union fee
iii. Facilities fee
iv. UHDS fee i.
h . Transit fee i. Fine Arts fee j. Facilities and Life Safety Enhancement fee j.
k.
Any other fee which is a prerequisite for registration
Quad Cities Fees a. Activity fee b. Computer Technology fee c. Publication fee d. Talent Grant fee e. Transit fee e.
f. Facilities and Life Safety Enhancement fee f. g. Any other fee which is a prerequisite for registration
5.
Waivers
Board approval is required to waive mandatory fees, except when a waiver is required by statute or authorized by Board regulation.
6.
Advance Deposit
The University may require an advance deposit from a student who has been accepted for admission or who preregisters for a subsequent term. This deposit will be applied to the registration fees for that term.
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7.
Collections
All registration fees must be collected prior to or during the academic term to which they apply.
Subject to Board approval, the University may offer a plan which would permit students to pay their tuition and fees in two or more installments during the academic term. A service charge may be added for students who elect to pay in more than one installment in accordance with an approved University plan. Unless an exception is granted by the President, all persons must meet all financial obligations to the University to maintain their status as enrolled students.
8.
Refunds
Board approval shall be required for any refund of mandatory fees other than in accordance with the following provisions. The term "refund" as used in this regulation may mean the cancellation of an unpaid obligation as well as an actual refund of amounts previously paid. a.
A student who does not register for the period of enrollment for which the student was charged, or who withdraws, drops out, takes an approved leave of absence, is expelled from the University or otherwise fails to complete the program on or after his or her first day of class of the period of enrollment for which he or she was charged shall receive a refund in compliance with the applicable provisions of federal law. b.
The University shall develop policies which implement these provisions as well as policies concerning the refund of mandatory fees because of a student's death or disability, extreme hardship, institutional error, or when otherwise in the best interest of the University. These policies and any changes shall become effective when approved by the President. c.
In compliance with the requirements of the Illinois Servicemen's Employment Tenure
Act (330 Illinois Compiled Statutes 6011 et seq.), as amended by P.A. 88-518, any person in military service with the state of Illinois pursuant to the orders of the
Governor shall receive a full monetary credit or refund of funds paid to any Illinois public university if the person is placed into a period of military service with the state of Illinois pursuant to the orders of the Governor and is unable to attend the university for a period of seven (7) or more days. Withdrawals from a course shall not impact upon the final grade average of the person under these circumstances. In addition, if any person who has been enrolled in any Illinois public university is unable to process his or her enrollment for the upcoming term, he or she shall have any and all late penalties or charges set aside, including any and all late processing fees for books, lab fees, and all items that were not in place because the person was engaged in military service and was unable to enroll in courses at the appropriate time. The rights granted by this paragraph are in addition to any other rights afforded under University policies to persons in military service with the state of Illinois pursuant to the orders of the Governor.
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9.
Activity Fee a.
Student activity fees, upon collection by the University, become State funds and are subject to statutes, regulations, and university policies and procedures applicable to
State funds generally. b.
The University shall develop policies concerning the administration of student activity fees. The policies and any changes shall become effective when approved by the President. The policies and any changes shall be submitted to the Board by the
President.
The policies shall contain the following provisions and such other provisions as are necessary and appropriate:
1.
Provisions for collection of all student activity fees at regular intervals.
2.
Provisions for allocation by a body which includes representation of appropriate student organizations and of students generally.
Resolution No. 13.12/7: Revision to Board Regulations, II.B.10., Termination with Notice – First
Reading
Matt Bierman said I’d just be happy to answer any questions that you might have. I know you’ve been briefed on it, so I’ll just answer any questions.
Trustee Ehlert Fuller moved to approve Resolution 13.12/7. Trustee Cole seconded the motion.
Roll Call
Trustee Ashmore
Trustee Clawson
Trustee Cole
Trustee Early
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Trustee Ehlert Fuller Yes
Trustee Epperly Yes
Trustee Hare
Trustee Savala
Yes
Yes
Motion Carried.
Resolution:
WHEREAS the Western Illinois University Board of Trustees must approve changes to regulations prior to implementation; and,
WHEREAS Western Illinois University wishes to institute a severance pay option for employees who can be terminated with notice; and,
WHEREAS Western Illinois University wishes to change the term required for notice:
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THEREFORE be it resolved that the Western Illinois University Board of Trustees approves the First
Reading of the revision to the Regulations Section II.B.10 – Termination with Notice.
Section: II. Employees
Subsection: B. Faculty and Administrative Employees
10. Reassignment and Termination a.
Reassignment
Administrative Employees at the University may be reassigned by the President without notice in advance. The President shall consult with the Board's Chairperson prior to the reassignment of a
Vice President. Employees, other than employees with a temporary appointment (including employees whose appointment is supported by grant or contract funds), who are reassigned shall receive written notice of any reduction in monthly compensation as follows:
1.
in the first year of employment at the University, not later than three one month prior to the effective date of reduction in monthly compensation; and
2.
in the second or subsequent year of employment at the University, not later than six three months prior to the effective date of reduction in monthly compensation.
This paragraph a. does not apply to Chairpersons. b.
Termination With Notice
All employees other than the President shall be employed by the Board and serve at the pleasure of the President. Employees, other than employees with a temporary appointment (including employees whose appointment is supported by grant or contract funds), shall receive written notice of termination signed by the President, as follows:
1.
in the first year of employment at the University, not later than three one month prior to the termination date specified in the notice or an immediate termination with severance pay as outlined in paragraph c.; and
2.
in the second through fifth year of employment at the University, not later than six three months prior to the termination date specified in the notice or an immediate termination with severance pay as outlined in paragraph c.; and
3.
in the sixth or subsequent year of employment at the University, not later than twelve six months prior to the termination date specified in the notice or an immediate termination with severance pay as outlined in paragraph c.
Employees terminated in accordance with this paragraph b. shall not be entitled to invoke the procedures for hearing provided in paragraph c d below. If such employees have academic rank
(but not tenure) they shall not be entitled to return to a teaching position. The provisions for prior notice set forth in this paragraph b. shall not be applicable in cases involving termination for cause, in which case the procedures specified in paragraph c d . below shall apply. This paragraph
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b. does not apply to the removal from office of Chairpersons. The President shall consult with the
Board's Chairperson prior to issuing a written notice of termination to a Vice President. c. Severance Pay
Severance pay amount will be based on the length of service as outlined here:
1.
in first year of employment at the University – One month salary
2.
in the second through the fifth year of employment at the University – Three months’ salary
3.
in the sixth or subsequent year of employment at the University – Six months’ salary severance pay will be issued in the form of a lump sum payment.
Benefits
Accrued time will be paid out to the employee. Vacation will stop accruing as of the effective date of termination. Insurance coverage, if applicable, ends on the last day of the month in which the employee receives the severance benefit. Upon termination of coverage, COBRA notification will be forwarded.
Employee(s) are not entitled to severance pay if they leave the University under the following conditions:
1.
Voluntary Resignation
2.
Termination for Cause
3.
Disability covered by Worker’s compensation
4.
Retirement
5.
Discontinuation of a Grant
6.
In the event that a University function or service is contracted, assigned or otherwise transferred to another entity and University employees in that function or service are offered employment by the other entity with-in (30) days of the contract, assignment or transfer, provided the employees receive 90% of previous salary (compensations) d.
Termination for Cause
1.
Employees Covered by a Collective Bargaining Agreement
Termination of a tenure appointment at any time or of a probationary, temporary, or other nontenure appointment before the end of the specified term shall be governed by the appropriate collective bargaining agreement.
2. Employees Not Covered by a Collective Bargaining Agreement
Termination of employees not covered by a collective bargaining agreement before the end of the specified term of employment may be effected at any time for adequate cause after notice and an opportunity to be heard as provided in these Regulations. Termination
44

proceedings shall be initiated by the President. The President shall notify the Board prior to the initiation of a termination proceeding against a Provost/Vice President, Dean, or
Associate/Assistant Provost/Vice President who supervises Deans.
"Adequate cause" as used in this paragraph c. shall mean one or more acts or omissions which, singly or in the aggregate, have directly and substantially affected or impaired an employee's performance or fulfillment of his/her duties.
3. The following provisions shall apply to university employees: a. The President shall have the right to a hearing by the Board. b. Prior to issuance of a notice of intent to seek termination of an employee, the supervising Vice President, Dean, or Director shall hold at least one meeting with the employee to discuss possible remedial actions by the employee or to discuss settlement of the matter. c. Prior to the initial meeting, the supervising Vice President, Dean, or Director shall provide the employee with a written statement of the purpose of the meeting, including an identification of the topics to be discussed. d. Additional meetings to discuss possible remedial actions by the employee or to discuss settlement of the matter may continue until either the Vice President, Dean, or Director or the employee notifies the other in writing of his/her belief that further meetings will not be productive. e. Not later than six months from the date of the first meeting (a time limitation which may be extended by agreement of the parties) the Vice President, Dean, or Director shall provide the employee in writing with one of the following: i. a statement that further action on the matter will not be pursued and that all references to it will be removed from the employee's personnel file; ii. a statement that further action on the matter will not be pursued at that time but that reference to it shall remain in the employee's personnel file; iii. specification of any remedial actions to be taken by the employee, the date by which the remedial actions are to be taken, the method to be used to evaluate whether the remedial actions have been successful, and a statement that no notice of intent to seek termination will be issued before evaluation of the remedial actions; iv. the terms upon which the matter is to be settled; or v. a notice of intent to seek termination. f. If the President issues a notice of intent to seek termination, the following procedure shall apply:
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i. A termination proceeding shall be initiated by the President providing a notice of intent to seek termination with a statement of reasons for termination to the employee. ii. The employee shall have the right to request a formal hearing before a committee of five employees selected from the faculty in the case of a faculty employee and selected from the administration in the case of an administrative employee. Such a request must be received in writing by the
President within fifteen work days after service of the notice of intent to seek termination. If the employee requests a hearing, the committee shall be selected within fifteen work days after the President has received the request.
The employee shall select two employees to serve on the committee, and the
President shall select two employees to serve on the committee. The four employees so selected shall select a fifth employee to serve on the committee. If a committee is not selected by the method described above within fifteen work days, the President shall appoint the remaining members of the committee. iii. The employee shall be provided with a notice of the hearing and specific written charges at least twenty work days prior to the hearing. During the proceedings the employee may be assisted by a counselor or advisor of his/her choice. iv. A verbatim record of the hearing will be taken and a typewritten copy will be provided to the employee. The burden of proof that adequate cause exists rests with the University and shall be satisfied only by clear and convincing evidence in the record considered as a whole. The employee will be afforded an opportunity to present witnesses and to confront and cross-examine all witnesses. v. A termination hearing shall not exceed three months unless extended by a majority vote of the hearing committee. The findings and recommendations of the committee shall be reduced to writing and furnished to the employee and the President within twenty work days after the conclusion of the hearing. If the hearing committee concludes that adequate cause has not been established by the evidence in the record, it will so report to the
President. If the President rejects the report, he/she shall state the reasons for doing so in writing to the hearing committee and the employee and provide an opportunity for a written response. If the hearing committee concludes that adequate cause for termination has been established, it will so recommend, with supporting reasons in writing, to the President. If the hearing committee concludes that adequate cause for a sanction less than termination has been established, it will so recommend, with supporting reasons in writing, to the President.
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vi. The recommendation of the President, along with that of the hearing committee should it not concur with the President, shall be submitted in writing to the Board. vii. If a hearing committee fails to provide its findings and recommendations in writing within twenty work days after conclusion of the hearing, the
President shall submit his/her recommendations in writing to the Board. viii. If the employee fails to request a hearing in writing within fifteen work days after service of the notice of intent to seek termination, the President shall consult with the Chairperson of the Board before deciding whether or not there is adequate cause for termination or for a sanction less than termination.
The decision of the President shall be reduced to writing and furnished to the employee with supporting reasons. The decision of the President in such cases shall be final.
4. The following provisions apply to all employees covered by this Subsection B.: a. An employee terminated for adequate cause shall not be entitled to salary, severance pay, or any other compensation beyond that earned up to the last day of employment. b. An employee served with notice of intent to seek termination may be suspended or reassigned by the President with compensation if he/she is of the opinion that the employee's presence in his/her appointed position constitutes a threat of bodily harm or harm to property or might impede operations. If, following the hearing process described above, it is determined that no action against the employee will be taken, the employee will be restored to his/her position. c. A record of any disciplinary action taken against an employee shall be placed in the employee's personnel file.
Resolution No. 13.12/8: University Professionals of Illinois (UPI) Local 4100 Memorandum of
Understanding
Provost Hawkinson said I have no further comments, so I just offer this for your consideration and available for any questions you might have.
Trustee Cole moved to approve Resolution 13.12/8. Trustee Ehlert Fuller seconded the motion.
Roll Call
Trustee Ashmore
Trustee Clawson
Trustee Cole
Trustee Early
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Trustee Ehlert Fuller Yes
Trustee Epperly
Trustee Hare
Trustee Savala
Yes
Yes
Yes
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Motion Carried.
Resolution:
WHEREAS the Board of Trustees must approve collective bargaining agreements prior to implementation; and,
WHEREAS an agreement was reached on October 23, 2013 and was ratified by the WIU Chapter of
University Professionals of Illinois (UPI) on November 19, 2013:
THEREFORE be it resolved that the Western Illinois University Board of Trustees approves the agreement as presented.
Western Illinois University and UPI Local 4100 jointly agree to the following Memorandum of
Understanding:
1.
The Agreement 2010-2015 , with the modifications identified in this MOA, will be extended from
May 31, 2014 through June 30, 2017.
2.
Basic Increase: a.
Effective the first day of the fall 2014 contract, or July 1, 2014, for 12-month employees, the Board will grant each eligible employee, under contract and in the bargaining unit during the 2014-2015 (FY15) year, a salary increase of 2.0% of the employee’s 2013-
2014 basic monthly salary. b.
For FY16 (2015-2016), the salary increase shall be 2%. c.
For FY17 (2016-2017), the salary increase shall be 1%.
3.
Minima and promotion will be adjusted according to the increases outlined above.
4.
If an employee signs, prior to May 31, 2014 an irrevocable election agreement to retire prior to
June 30, 2015 the employee will be exempt from the new contract and retain rights to wage increases guaranteed under the prior contract ( WIU/UPI 2010-2015 Agreement ). These employees who signed the irrevocable election letter to retire will also be eligible for other compensation increases as agreed in the WIU/UPI 2010-2015 Agreement if they are employed that year. An employee who signs an irrevocable election on or after July 1, 2014 will be subject to pay provisions effective at the time they sign the IER.
5.
A Grant Fellowship program will be established.
6.
Unit B Faculty Administrative Leave: The number of administrative leaves will not exceed one at any given point in time. Administrative leave may be for a year-long 50% assignment, for a semester-long 50% assignment. Implementation procedures for Unit B faculty administrative leaves will be developed jointly by UPI and the Administration by March 2014. The procedures will be articulated in a MOU.
7.
The date in Article 13.6.a will be updated so that the Committee to Study Market Equity is to complete its report and submit it to the University President and Union Chapter President by
April 1, 2016.
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8.
Committee to Review Workloads for Academic Support Professionals: The University and Union agree to form a Committee to review workloads for Academic Support Professionals prior to the end of this contract. The University and Union shall appoint an equal number of representatives to serve on the committee as voting members. Non-voting members and staff may be appointed to the committee by either the University or Union as appropriate. The committee is to complete its report and submit it to the University President and Union Chapter President.
9.
Committee to Study Possible Promotional System for Unit B: The University and Union agree to form a Committee to study the possibility of developing a promotional system for Unit B employees prior to the end of this contract. The University and Union shall appoint an equal number of representatives to serve on the committee as voting members. Non-voting members and staff may be appointed to the committee by either the University or Union as appropriate.
The committee is to complete its report and submit it to the University President and Union
Chapter President.
10.
Article 20.8.b will be updated as below to reflect a change in date from December 15 to January
15.
20.8.b. Written notice that a probationary appointment will not be renewed will be given to an employee by the University President as follows:
(1) By not later than April 1 for employees in PY1 and PY
(2) By not later than January 15 for employees in PY3 and PY
(3) By not later than 12 months before expiration of the appointment for employees in PY5 and PY6 (tenure year)
11.
All Agreement Articles, except those related to compensation and Articles 13.6.a and 20.8.b, will remain unchanged. This includes articles related to department criteria, PAA, summer rotation, department workload equivalents, college workload equivalents, etc.
OLD BUSINESS
There was no old business to discuss.
NEW BUSINESS
There was no new business to discuss.
NEXT MEETING
Chair Early stated the next meeting of the Board of Trustees is March 28, 2014, on the Macomb campus.
Chair Early said I will reiterate sentiments that were expressed earlier by President Thomas. I wish everybody a happy holiday season and safe travels, and I appreciate everybody taking time out of their schedules to attend the meeting today. I also want to remind everyone that at 1:30 p.m. we will have the ribbon cutting at the new entrance at University Drive and Lafayette. Just as a reminder to the Trustees, we’ve got the ROTC Commissioning at 4 p.m., and then robing at 5 p.m. over in Western Hall. The
ROTC Commissioning is right out here in the Prairie Lounge, and then the robing will be in Western
Hall, and the Honors Convocation begins at 5:30 p.m. Yes, Vice President Biller? VP Biller said was the
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Board interested in a tour of the construction going on in this building? Chair Early said yes, I think we should have enough time to do it. We’re going to go ahead and have lunch, and then we’ll do a brief tour of the facility. VP Biller said I’ll alert the director. Chair Early said ok, I’ll speak with you. Why don’t we speak in just a second. That sounds great.
There being no further business to come before the Board, a motion was made and duly processed to adjourn the meeting of the Board at 11:48 A.M.
Cathy E. Early, Chair
Kerry L. McBride, Administrative Assistant to the Board cr
50